I was here first!

Photo by Daniel Bock, The Miami Herald

In another first for The Autistic Journalist, I will be analyzing two reporters covering the same story after a Google News search uncovered another article on Barbara Delgado’s Miami Dance Project summer camp at the New Image Dance Studio. As I mentioned in my last post, Delgado is certified as an autism movement therapist. However, we get a closer examination via Nadege Green of The Miami Herald that NBC Miami couldn’t allocate resources for.

Green’s story is more descriptive, using words in place of action shots in Diana Gonzalez’s version. We learn more about the nine students enrolled in Delgado’s autism therapy dance class and the “curriculum” students take to address their autism spectrum disorder. One student, legally an adult, often leads class in combinations and spends part of her day in another studio with dancers who aren’t autistic.

We learn the students enjoy the classes enough to not notice the “therapy” part. In fact, dancing is only part of the day’s activities in Delgado’s class. Yoga, body strengthening exercises, crafts and activities to improve written and oral skills are also incorporated (two of them can assist in maximizing dancing ability, while the other two help maximize social ability).

Green also shared the origin of Delgado’s journey from certification to starting an autism dance class: Delgado offered a free autism movement therapy dance class on Sundays before starting the summer program, citing a desire to create a space where autistic kids feel no different from their neurotypical counterparts. Hugs and high-fives are shared frequently to help foster a supportive environment. Ultimately, her goal is to start a professional dance company for autistic dancers.

Green can share a lot more and employ some novel storytelling techniques because she had a larger space to report her story than Gonzalez. Unless assigned column space is quite small, written articles will generally have more detail than television stories when covering the same topic. In particular, print journalism is primarily about word choice; feature stories seek to give readers a sense of visualization by observing details about the subject being covered. Photos can supplement this form of storytelling, especially on the Internet where limits are lifted. However, the story’s effectiveness solely rests on the writer, and Green handles the task well by profiling multiple students involved from start to finish. Whether the students speak themselves or parents speak for the less verbal participants, the quotes published in the story suggest Green asked the students why the joined the program and what they like about it, reinforcing the summer camp’s idea of not pointing out the supplementary mission plans of the dance class.

While Gonzalez’s electronic version highlights the “non-traditional” form of autism intervention on its own, Green’s story spells out how the program does more to assist autistic children beyond improving their dance skills. Readers considering joining the program themselves may now understand other forms of therapy are not sacrificed with the class.

A curious element to the story itself is when Green began reporting on Delgado’s dance class. The Miami Herald story was published the same day as NBC Miami’s was, although NBC Miami posted their version online a few hours before The Miami Herald, suggesting the paper either submitted the story for publication in its traditional form either Monday or Tuesday of this week. Given the time frame, it’s very unlikely that either journalist picked up the story by getting hold of the other’s beforehand, and there’s usually no rivalry between a print and television news outlet. How the class was discovered may not be known, but with two reporters discussing the same class, the reporters could have picked up the story through a press release or a mutual contact that happened to know both Gonzalez and Green or their superiors.

Green’s advantages in reporting for The Miami Herald certainly doesn’t mean written articles are superior to television stories. The two stories only illustrate the differences between the two media. I wouldn’t expect additional stories on Delgado’s autism movement therapy sessions with the summer class wrapping up on Friday, but other reporters in Miami and beyond may draw inspiration to find “new” forms of autistic intervention to dissect for the audience. Dancing may not be the magic solution, but Delgado’s contributions may redefine how to treat autistic children.

Insert favorite dance song lyric here

Diana Gonzalez of NBC Miami offers a profile story of her own, highlighting the Miami Dance Project’s summer camp at New Image Dance Studio. Although studio owner Barbara Delgado has won many trophies and medals in competitions since opening the studio 12 years ago, she says the passion exhibited by autistic students is no less incredible.

Delgado likely understands the passion as she is certified in autism therapy, seeing a need to teach autistic students a creative form of communication. The patterns students learn from dancing correlate with developing other skills away from the floor, with Delgado and a parent of one of her students citing improvement in other facets of communication and development. Although Delgado’s camp ends this Friday, the autism movement therapy program will continue as an after-school program at an elementary school in West Miami-Dade.

The story is short, as most TV news packages are (Gonzalez’s piece was 1 minute, 39 seconds), making the emphasis on maximizing efficiency within a small space. Gonzalez takes care of that by beginning the story with Delgado and what led her to create the summer camp, followed by moving the story’s focus to student participants. While the kids were effortlessly weaved into the story, their transition was possible because of work done ahead of time. Taping the story wouldn’t be possible in the first place without obtaining permission from the dance studio, the parents of the autism therapy movement program, or both. Usually, a written release form must be signed in order to use footage of people under the age of 18, although you’ll never hear of the behind-the-scenes work because those details are considered in extraneous in a thirty-minute news block (or even a 24-hour news block).

Instead, we see a lot of action in shot selection for Gonzalez’s story. The only “static” shots are the images of trophies to illuminate the contrast of winning multiple awards versus using skills to improve the lives of others. Although summarizing six weeks in 100 seconds is impossible, we can gauge from the story that Delgado has her students in a very active dancing routine.

One other element in this story has nothing to do with the dance program itself, nor will this element likely be emphasized in Miami. Factoring the city’s demographics, viewers who may see this story outside of Miami will also see autism’s lack of discrimination with its “targets.” A similar idea was displayed when Holly Robinson Peete promoted autism awareness on her talk show in the month of April. Although Gonzalez’s story is likely not the first to involve autism in the Miami market, the city’s large Hispanic population is no less immune to the condition.

Whether the audience will be armed with knowledge that dancing is an effective therapy for autistic children or of autism’s endless choice of inhabitants, Gonzalez’s story is a classic example of what can happen when you provide a complete feature story in a window of two minutes or less.