Category: Uncategorized (Page 4 of 20)

Traveling to Neustadt – a German town with a population of just over fifty-three thousand, located about an hour-long drive from Frankfurt – Jack Goldfrank was uneasy at the thought of setting foot on the same land his father had been forced to leave in 1933 for fear of Nazi persecution. The son of two Jewish German refugees, Jack remains unsure whether his parents would be proud of his pilgrimage to their homeland. 

Upon arriving in Neustadt, he and his wife, Jane, were greeted by the Mayor, who welcomed them into his office and revealed what he called “The Book of Remembrances.” Included in this book is the name of every Jewish person who had fled Nazi persecution in Neustadt from 1933 onwards. As the couple looked through the artifact, the mayor announced that they were the second Jewish Americans to return to Neustadt in connection with their family’s history.

The Mayor then accompanied Jack and Jane to the town’s Jewish cemetery – a burial ground Jack called “not in pristine shape,” but “decent.” “There were a lot of Goldfranks in the cemetery,” Jack tells me. “But the last burial there was in 1937. No Jews had ever gone back to that town.”

Jane adds, “The mayor was very nice. But, in my mind, I’m always remembering that these people, or their parents, were Nazis. It was always like, do they really feel this, or are they doing what they think is right? Does it matter? For me, it was confusing.” 

“My big feeling was discomfort,” Jack says. 

This trip was the first Jack Goldfrank took on his new German passport after reclaiming his German citizenship in the first months of 2025. This encounter with the mayor of Neustadt would fade in his recollection of the visit, overshadowed by lively memories of Berlin light festivals and museum tours. It wasn’t until sitting with me, his granddaughter, that he and his wife began to revisit the feelings of unease they experienced in Neustadt.

My family is just one of the many American Jewish families that have reclaimed their German citizenship in recent years, coinciding with President Donald Trump’s rise to power. Between 2016 and 2024, the German Consulate in New York City reported a more than 300% increase in applications for citizenship reclamation. Yet for some Jews who return to Germany generations after their ancestors fled Nazi persecution, the reality reveals that the nation has not moved as far from its past as they once imagined – encountering an overextension of Germany’s “memory culture” around the Holocaust that can manifest in instances of Jewish fetishization and an overperformance of repentance.

As Martin Kohler drove toward the Berlin neighborhood of Neukölln, he gave a warning of what the man sitting next to him was about to witness. “Germany is changing really fast,” he said. The passenger, Wesley Winter, nodded at Kohler’s words, listening with rapt attention while training his video camera on Kohler.

Soon after the duo stepped out onto Sonnenallee, Neukölln’s main drag, Winter could not contain his shock from the camera. “It’s almost like a parallel universe,” he breathed, as he pointed his camera at a barbershop with Turkish advertisements and a Palestinian flag swaying from a window above. Along the street, kebab shops sizzled, sending the aroma of roasting meat drifting through the cold winter air. Shoppers browsed clothing outlets that advertised headscarves and grocery stores that boasted halal meat.

Letting loose a grim laugh, Kohler surveyed the scene. His conclusion was blunt: “No integration.”

Walking past local food stores and community centers, Kohler spoke about how immigrant-populated neighborhoods like the one in Neukölln were cropping up across the city. “First,” he said, “it’s one kebab shop. And then on the opposite side there opens a shisha bar, [then] a shop for halal meat. And even more, you have a street where Muslims are feeling quite well. And then more are coming.” Winter, an up-and-coming right-wing YouTuber from England, asked him in a concerned tone whether the average German wanted this expansion in a city like Berlin. Without missing a beat, Kohler replied, “No. Absolutely not. That’s why so many Germans [are] leaving Berlin.”

The video that Winter published from his tour with Kohler, titled “Germany is Out of Control,” garnered more than 270,000 views. In it, Kohler, a rising voice in Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, could share his message with the world. Berlin, he conveyed, was under attack from a hostile population of Muslim migrants that preferred reproducing their own culture in Germany to assimilating into the existing society. This narrative, which Kohler’s party has been pushing nationwide to justify its hardline stance on immigration, catapulted AfD forward to become one of the largest and most energetic political movements in the country. Winning over 20 percent of the vote share in the 2025 federal elections, the AfD now tops opinion polls as the most favored party nationwide.

This narrative may find success among Germany’s electorate as a whole. But it’s a different story in Berlin, where Kohler stands as a party representative. At the state level, a center-right SPD/CDU coalition is firmly in power, a large left-wing bloc wields influence, and people are skeptical of the AfD’s restrictive approach to migration. Internally, the state party faces challenges, too. It has been plagued by a history of infighting and incompetence; one former member accused AfD Berlin of embodying “unambitious mediocrity and opportunistic indifference.” The confident authority with which Kohler spoke during Winter’s video belied these challenges, which have impeded AfD’s ability to generate and then capitalize on anti-migration fears in Berlin

Kohler, though, has not given up on winning over Berlin. “As a patriot,” he said. “If you give up the capital city, you can give up the whole project of getting in power and conquering your country back.”

What would it take for Kohler and his peers to turn AfD’s ship around in Berlin? And what would this mean for AfD’s national chances if they succeed?

Two of the main readings this week—The case of Jane Doe Ponytail and Aleppo After the Fall—tried to tell a story about a place as much as about people. In Dan Berry and Jeffery Singer’s piece, of course, the focus is on Song Yang—we follow her life story from her upbringing in China to her entrance into the massage industry and to her death on 40th Street. But what separates this story from, say, the one we read about Skalnik last week, is how much Berry and Singer embed Song Yang into her surroundings. Indeed, Berry claims that the “reason for being” of the piece was in the 12th graf of the piece—which conveyed “All this craziness is occurring in one little place and this city is so large and so complicated, and so distracted by everything else, that it doesn’t even see this.” The rest of the piece is a balance between this craziness and Song Yang’s story, requiring the writers to not crush her under the narrative weight of the place itself.

The piece is often at its best when it zooms out to describe 40th street. The “Night comes to 40th Road” section toward its end is almost novelistic in the saturated description of the street and the women along it. These descriptions bring us into the world that Song Yang inhabited, tell us something about her story in a way that quotes or narrative progression cannot. Something about the constant activity of the city escapes the traditional storytelling format: it is a character that moves somewhat independently of Song Yang’s life, that cannot be contained or controlled by individual human agency alone. Therefore, we leave the piece knowing that although Song Yang is gone, like everything in New York City, the street remains ever-changing as it has always been. That being said, the piece’s chief triumph is arguably making the reader feel Song Yang’s absence during its final scenes. Life goes on; the street takes on new forms. But, we will remember, it does so without Song Yang in the picture. And that matters.

Finally, one of the most innovative elements of the piece that I’d like to discuss more in class is the relegation of attributions to the note at the end of the piece. From a narrative perspective, this is an effective move, as it cuts through all the intra-piece attribution that slows down storytelling progression and mutes affective impact. But from a historical or investigative perspective, it can be a little frustrating, as we are not sure which pieces of information came from which source. It makes subsequent corroboration or elaboration difficult.

Meanwhile, Worth’s main character is a city in more explicit terms. That, I think, may be the reason why I, along with others in the class, grated at the piece at times. The introductory scene is astounding and expertly conveyed, but Worth swiftly moves the reader onto different topics. We are in effect gaining a composite view of the city, stitched together from several vantage points across varying periods of time, to see what it takes for a city to become lost. What we lose in the specificity of one person’s experience we gain in the comprehensiveness of multiple vignettes. Worth’s structure helped at times to convey this composite methodology, but I do think he could have clued the reader in on that method a little sooner—the end of the lede section, for example, lacks a nut graf that could orient the reader to the kind of piece to follow. Where this does create problems is within sections. For example, one section that began with a man who learned his military friends had all been killed then quickly zooms out to reflect on the lack of young men in the street and Assad’s political strategy, before moving to the issue of looting. The bridge between subject and story was slightly abrupt for my liking. Perhaps the unifier was simply: “soldiers’ actions in war,” but I would have liked a stronger orientation to that message. Perhaps the fragmented components of his piece were also intentional in some ways. Aleppo has shattered and Worth seems to be picking up the broken pieces, trying to put them into some shape again. Maybe he doesn’t entirely succeed in creating a cohesive whole, but maybe that’s not the point, because the whole doesn’t exist anymore.

In the readings for this week, I found the lede in the NYT article about the sex worker the strongest. By starting off the article with a woman falling, the reader is immediately drawn in, reading on to figure out how she got there and if she will survive. Because gravity is so fast acting, the author is able to slow down her fall by talking about the circumstances of the situation while the reader is picturing her in mid-air, waiting for her to reach the ground. In my head, I was truly picturing a woman, suspended mid fall, as I eagerly finished the lede to understand her fate. 

Another capturing lede I enjoyed was the article about Apello. This opening, along with the story as a whole, is made powerful by the geographical queues. When the man walks outside of his house, allowing the reader to picture how close he was to the front lines sets the dangerous tone throughout the story. After the lede, I appreciate how the article was told walking through the area and stopping at important landmarks for the main character. Within this clear structure, there were breaks with other stories being told, then the focus would shift again back to the main storyline of the author walking with the narrator. I found that this was a clear way to tell many different stories, many of which were in different times that were not chronologically organized, in a concise way. 

The structure for the article about AI in Gaza is a little more straightforward, especially since the article is not quite as long as the other stories. Reading the article, it follows one stream of thought with chronological interruptions used in order to add or expand on ideas. This style seems to be the most common for medium sized stories, especially ones that do not have one central character who requires a longer telling of their lifetime. 

John McPhee’s chapter about frame of reference was a little less impactful for me as a reader. My main takeaway from this chapter was that it is important for journalists to be cognizant of their target audience, and to be sparing with references that many may not understand. Most of the chapter seemed like McPhee was reminiscing on years past when references of his generation would add to a story as most of the audience would make the connection. While I do agree that, in general, pop-culture type references should be avoided for readability, this chapter didn’t quite seem so pertinent to today’s lesson. I do this this message may inform my reporting in the sense that any reference to past events should also include a small description or a link to keep clarity.

This week’s readings provided additional examples of different structures that can be used in long-form reporting. From the terrifying prospect of AI warfare on a global scale to the story of the death of a Chinese migrant in Flushing, these stories range in topic and the mechanisms they use to convey their findings. 

When first reading Dan Barry and Jeffrey E. Singer’s The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail, I was first struck by the almost cinematic structure employed by these journalists in conveying the story. The article starts with a scene that Barry and Singer did not personally see, nor is truly verifiable through any secondary materials or accounts: Song Yang falling (or jumping) from her fourth-story balcony. Journalists defy the natural order of the events, instead instructing readers to pause the vision of her fall halfway through to provide more context to her descent – where she was and why she was falling. Barry and Singer then provide details about Flushing’s commercial sex trade and details about Song Yang’s life before returning to this fall to her death and the subsequent struggles for her family. While I found this structure to be extremely interesting and effective in entrancing readers in the story (supplemented by Barry’s fascinating insights in the Global Investigative Journalism Network piece), the beginning of the story and several scenes throughout the piece felt almost contrived or like a piece of fiction rather than investigative journalism. As I touched upon above, the opening scene is not necessarily a true depiction of events but rather a reconstruction of pieced-together video footage that stops once Yang moves to her balcony. Barry and Singer acknowledge this lack of verification later in the piece, using it to add to the suspense that no one knows what really happened on the balcony, but, in my opinion, excluding this in the opening seems slightly deceptive to readers and a construction that ultimately serves to heighten the drama of the piece at the cost of accuracy.

Aleppo After the Fall by Robert F. Worth takes an extremely different approach to storytelling and structure. Instead of following a specific character or singular event, Worth details the crises that have torn Aleppo apart, centering his linear reporting and the different people he talked to within the process. I found this structure to not be nearly as enticing a read and noticed my attention waning at several points throughout, but the piece was much easier to track in terms of figuring out where each piece of information originated. Worth is also careful to describe the damage and fear incited by both Assad and rebel forces – contributing to the thoroughness and impressive nature of this article. 

These extremely different pieces, therefore, showcase the wide-ranging potential of long-form investigative journalism, while also highlighting the benefits and potential downsides of these different ways of reporting. 

What do journalists mean when we say we are “making meaning” through our work? In short-form news pieces, a journalist’s job is often simply: let people know what happened. People will “make meaning” of the news, or they won’t. Our job is simply to provide them the information they need to do so. But we see long-form differently. We’re not just telling people what happened, we’re telling people a story. That story has an order, which tends to reflect the meaning that the writer has made from all of the information they have collected in their research. In the final product of a long-form piece, the reader doesn’t get all the information – that would be impossible, especially if, as Chip Scanlan puts it, that journalist sets out to “find out everything they can” at the beginning of their reporting. But what does it actually mean to “make meaning”? Can meaning be made? 

Putting together this week’s reading, and last week’s, I think what people mean when they say “make meaning” is actually “make structure.” Scanlan describes Song Yang’s death as “the byproduct of a wretched, Dickensian system.” Part of the structure – ergo meaning – of this piece is that Song Yang’s death is not just a fluke, but part of a larger system. She is a window into a world few have seen. As Barry tells Scanlan in the annotated copy, there is no precise nut graf in the story, but its “reason for being” (the best way I have heard a nut graf described) is delivered in his 12th graf “A tenth of a mile… and few in this city will take notice.” This reminded me of the “reason for being” of Senior’s assessment of why Bobby Mcilvaine’s story mattered; that in the aftermath of 9/11, we all understand the event as a whole, but our knowledge of individual stories are limited. In these cases, Barry and Senior make meaning in a very direct way: they tell us what the meaning is. 

Robert Worth accomplishes something similar in “Aleppo After the Fall,” rolling lede and nut graf into a neat narrative. In his story, we don’t quite need a directly stated “reason for being” as we might in “The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail.” It is clear that this story is tied to Bashar al-Assad’s fall, an obviously significant event. We get more contextual descriptions in graf 8 and 9, but never does Worth exactly state  a reason for being. 

There are also subtler ways of assigning meaning through structure: symbols, motifs, and recurring metaphors as one might find in a book. Song Yang’s butterflies particularly stood out to me. The image of the young girl showing iridescent pressed butterfly wings to her friends at sleepovers tied with the butterfly-adorned headband which flies off her head in her fall infuses the structure with meaning. The detail is not meaningful because it is representative of a larger system, but rather because it is unique to Song Yang – an image around which we can order her life. 

The last form of meaning-making that stood out to me comes not through structure but rather journalistic access. Whether it’s access to a place like 40th Street or access to a place like meetings regarding Ukraine in the oval office, as we get in Isabelle Khurshudyan’s piece, the settings of these pieces take on meaning because we could not get to them without the journalist’s help. Ultimately, I’m not sure journalists actually do make meaning. It’s a small and probably insignificant difference, but I think they find it where it already is, structure it, and deliver it. Part of this delivery also comes through being attentive to a reader’s likely frame of reference, as McPhee describes it. Attending to structure, frames of reference, and what we are giving our readers access to that they didn’t already have is how we illuminate meaning for our readers. Knowing that we are doing so is how we make meaning of our work to ourselves.

The Aleppo and Jane Doe Ponytail piece starts off similarly: in the midst of an active scene that sucks the reader into a moment of suspense. “If I’m thinking in terms of story, thinking cinematically and how to lure the reader, it was one of the very first things that struck me: this poor woman falling,” author Dan Barry said for the GIJN article. Barry succeeds: á lá true crime podcast episode, we are drawn into the climactic scene of the story before its context is even introduced. The story slowly unfolds, revealing not only the true nature of Song Yang’s downfall but the story of her life, family, and the thriving underground sex industry, primarily populated by Flushing’s low-income immigrant women.

The Aleppo story runs in the same vein of suspense in the introduction, but its effects are slightly different, and in my opinion, less effective. We begin with the story of Abu Sami, whose sedentary life has miraculously spared him from witnessing the changes the city went through. Only after being escorted out by rebel soldiers did he see the light of sun for the first time in four and a half years. The scene is effective and interesting, but remains a loose end for the majority of the piece. The article then delves into the sociopolitical complexities of the region and attempts to piece together life in Aleppo before and after its destruction. The piece felt less effective in that it was trying to accomplish too much, all at once. It tries to elaborate on every factor that led to Aleppo’s demise and traces far too many groups, events, and individuals. I enjoyed how the author included anecdotes of his own experiences. But he was asking the reader to follow a lot of information, and sometimes that information felt disjointed. For example, for a few grafs, the author sums up reasons that many Syrians’ abhorrence against rebel groups in spite of their dislike for the Assad regime — they looted many civillians and their homes. Then the author introduces us to Marrache and Marie-Michelle, whose house, once beautiful, was destroyed by conflict and looting. Then the author reminisces an Aleppo from before; then suddenly we are talking about the conflict between urban wealth and rural poverty. There were too many people, too many events, too many groups, to keep track of. I kept finding myself reading and rereading grafs because I would lose his train or thought or be unable to connect one graf from another.

Perhaps its unfair for me to expect that the a piece on the conflict-hidden history of one city will rival the structural clarity of a piece centered on the death of one woman, but I do think the Jane Doe Ponytail piece did what the Aleppo piece didn’t: it didn’t leave any loose ends. The information that the authors shared with us made sense in the grand scheme of the story. We don’t get back to the story of Abu Sami, the professor who “shut himself off from the war inside his home,” until the very final few grafs of the Aleppo story. The first and climactic scene of the Jane Doe Ponytail story is entirely explained by the end of the article. The death of this woman means so, so much more to the reader by the end of the story than it did in the beginning. I do think it’s very difficult to keep the reader interested in any longform piece, and I do think the scenes that the authors chose for their respective pieces sufficiently drew me in, at least in the beginning. But I think that crumbs that I give to my reader should lead to a trail that they can follow, not just more crumbs atop another. It’s easy to bombard the reader with information; it’s a bit harder to ensure they can make sense out of all of it.

One morning in mid-December, Syrian soldiers knocked on the door of a house in eastern Aleppo. A man who hadn’t stepped outside in four and a half years opened the door. That’s how Aleppo After the Fall begins. From that initial moment, the whole story unfolds in a way that centers the lived experiences of those on the ground. Robert Worth, the journalist who wrote this piece, doesn’t use many official sources or expert interviews. Instead, he builds a vivid description of Aleppo and the ongoing conflict in Syria through individual voices and scenes that help create a narrative. The structure of the piece almost mirrors how a conversation would unfold: in pieces, one at a time.

Additionally, by framing the piece in the way that he does, the reader is able to see that the story is not just about the Assad regime or the rebels fighting to stop it. It is a story framed by the lived experiences of ordinary citizens who must rebuild their lives every time conflict erupts. By the end of the piece, readers are able to see that the narratives surrounding the war were much murkier than any one person or perspective is able to explain.

Furthermore, the author started with the aftermath immediately and deviated from a structure that dramatically takes the reader from the before to the after. In my opinion, this was crucial in helping frame the overall piece. The non-linear structure of the article in general and its almost fragmented nature also helps guide the story along. Minimal intervention by the author also lends the story more legitimacy. The context that is provided to the reader only includes the necessary information they would need to assess the credibility of the people the writer interviewed. This gives space for ambiguity that resists framing either side as being in the right, something that left me feeling disoriented at times.

In contrast, the Time article on AI Warfare, captures the story from afar. The human figures behind the warfare being described are almost invisible. The story thus doesn’t necessarily have a main character. Instead, the story relies on experts to frame the discussion and provide analysis on new developments. This choice helps provide the piece with the credibility needed to discuss a groundbreaking technological system. In many ways, by framing the piece in the manner that she does, Yasmeen Serhan is able to show just how far removed modern warfare has become from human decision-making. Her piece seems to purposely be detached rather than personal. Unlike the other stories, I wasn’t immersed in an emotional narrative. Rather, I was compelled to confront the practical realities of what AI means for warfare.

Finally, in The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail, the frame shifts to a single shapeless human being at the start of the story. It tells the tragic story of Song Yang in reverse, starting first with her tragic fall off a balcony. A number of things stood out to me in this piece. First, the setting of the story, similar to Worth’s piece, helps ground the reader in a specific place and reality. Second, the writers end the piece in a way that underscores the humanity and daily struggles faced by countless vulnerable women like Song Yang. By writing the piece in the manner they did, Barry and Singer, wrote a piece that is truly remarkable in what it is able to make the reader feel.

TIME’s article about Israel’s Use of AI in Gaza is heavy on quotes. The piece relies on experts to explain Israel’s mounting reliance on AI to locate and suggest targets, and the humanitarian implication of this trend. While the article lacks a central character, expert opinions coalesce to form a daunting picture of warfare’s future. The author writes that, according to experts, drones “are not yet fully autonomous,” suggesting that soon, if international law doesn’t implement guardrails, drones may target and kill with no human in the loop. 

Though Serhan relies more on expert opinion than narrative detail, she manages to connect to readers through a deft balance of familiarity and distance. From the start, she implores readers to recall images they’ve seen (“AI warfare may conjure up images of killer robots and autonomous drones”), creating a target of contradiction for what’s to follow (“a different reality is unfolding in the Gaza strip”). Not only does this set-up allow readers to feel grounded in their imaginations, but it also creates suspense. Serhan primes readers to anticipate surprise. In this piece, what McPhee defines as “frame of reference” is the summation of images and news items covering the war in Gaza, and the role of drones in this conflict, that the reader has consumed. 

In both Robert Worth’s feature about Aleppo after the rebels’ siege of the city and Dan Barry’s piece on Song Yang, setting is a central frame of reference. Both writers contribute their own observations of place to a broader story which, in each case, is largely about a set of characters’ evolving relationship with that setting, the passage of time, and death. 

Barry and Singer’s piece is, no doubt, immersive. I was moved by the story behind it: Barry read a headline, it made him mad, so he decided to learn more. The story he and Singer follow is an investigation into the dead woman’s life, circumstances, neighborhood, and the women who continue to toil under the exploitative conditions she underwent. 

This story is most successful when its frame of reference is consistent. About halfway through the narrative, Barry zeroes in on 40th road. Readers learn more about the aftermath of Song Yang’s death. Her mother’s grief and brother’s conspiracies are central plot lines. This focus–on the family’s and neighborhood’s reaction to Song Yang’s death in Flushing–recreated a textured world, making Song Yang’s absence all the more apparent. 

When the narrative jumped around, in time and setting, I lost interest. Song Yang is nowhere near as multidimensional a character in the story as her brother. The ongoing action of her brother’s investigation into her death draws the reader in. And the reporter benefits from observing him in action. While the history of Song Yang is compelling, it lacks depth in writing. Further, anecdotes from her childhood are interwoven with details about her life in Flushing, and I found these transitions disorienting. If anything, the successes and shortcomings of this piece underscored the reliability of chronology as an immersive tool.

My article will be focused on how racism and anti-immigration rhetoric from far-right politics, particularly Germany’s AfD party, is playing a role in the stands and field of football clubs across the country. The article will begin with speaking on the popularity of the sport within Germany, and then transition into speaking on the role of a club’s political beliefs and reputation, and how this is oftentimes shaped by the fans.  I will then speak on the recent influx of reports that the fan scene even at the more liberal clubs is becoming more conservative, and how this has prompted protests condemning AFD and right-wing extremism. Most importantly, I will include interviews from football journalists, and people who work inside the club who have seen these changes occur in real time. 

The people I met in Berlin will become characters in my story, including the social worker who I wrote my profile on. Additionally, I hope to talk more with a player who comes from an immigrant background about their experiences with the fans, and how it affects them during their time on and off the field. As well as what they think football clubs can do better to protect their players and make the sport more inclusive, particularly towards immigrants. I have not locked down a particular player yet, but I hope to include at least one player in this article. I haven’t found that IT character as I stated in class, so at the moment I have been trying to figure out another angle of the story that still gets at the heart of sports and migration. 

I will be including video evidence of some of the chants fans have utilized in the stadium that take aim at a particular ethnic or religious identity. I additionally hope to speak to ROOTS Against Racism In Sports, a German based organization that focuses on providing guidance towards professional athletes that are negatively impacted by racism in sport. As well as one of the AfD members currently sitting on the German parliament’s committee for Sports and Volunteering who I have previously reached out to, and Ozgur Ozvatan who was a former youth national team player for Germany, works for the Berlin football association, and has done research on sports and migration following his soccer career.