Muckraking Reflection

The Muckraking assignment was a very long yet interesting process. Erik and I investigated the flaws within the justice system and police departments. Prior to our topic selection, we had very clear and bias ideas about these subjects. After listening to several different viewpoints, motivating interviews, and evidence from both sides, we came to a final decision. The research process really helped in allowing us to understand more about the subject. As said, we had very bias ideas with little to none evidence to support it. As "muckrakers", we were able to not only incorporate our personal beliefs, but also the opposing beliefs. We started our research by answering the prep questions on the Muckraking document, then we decided to start the real research with online articles. For the interviews, we wanted to have the actual face to face experience so we knocked on several doors asking residents if we could interview them with a few questions. The people we interviewed varied in age, sex, race, and location. We then wanted to compare the several ideas that we received from these people and see if their beliefs aligned with anything that we found from the online research. When we were coming up with our thesis, we were not sure if we wanted to focus mainly on racism and prejudice, so we ended up broadening our thesis to cover more ground. The layout of our article did not have a certain order. The images that we put in our article were selected with ideas that corresponded to what we wrote. The charts the we inserted gave our article more factual support. Overall, I feel that the article we made represented our ideals pretty well. We had some struggles at first but we were able to get past them and come up with a bright article. Actually, we were planning on making a documentary until we realized that the article option would be easier to get our point across. The article allows for us to show more of our research skills. The "solution" that we came up with was reasonable and achievable. We were both a bit skeptical about writing about racism because honestly there is no real solution to racism. However, we came up with ways to ease the issue and indirectly solve flaws. The justice system has never changed and we knew that, so coming up with a solution for that was pretty difficult. In the end, our experience was great and we hope that our idea spreads to others.