{"id":11578,"date":"2026-07-21T20:04:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/?p=11578"},"modified":"2026-08-02T20:17:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T01:17:43","slug":"dog-ged-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/07\/dog-ged-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Dog-ged journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Extra! Extra! Read all a-bark it!<\/span><\/p>\n

From the dog beach to the park, cherubs dug up all the facts this summer, while also spending some time with the furry friends of Evanston.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor a broadcast lab, we had to go out and ask people about the weather, and my partner and I decided to go to the dog beach, which was really fun,\u201d Eva Saraf of Statham, Georgia, said. \u201cThere were dogs playing in the water, and one owner had taken their dog to the dog beach for their birthday. It was really cute.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Saraf, who volunteers at an animal shelter back home, said that she was excited to see dogs outside and in the classroom.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In her guest lecture \u201cReporting on the Whole Community,\u201d Bloomberg News reporter Erin Ailworth brought her dog Clark, named after Clark Kent, to visit with the cherubs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe was right in front of me during the lecture, so I pet him a lot,\u201d Saraf said. \u201cI went up to Erin at the end just to see Clark.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In her lecture, Ailworth demonstrated to the cherubs how a dog can be a journalist\u2019s best friend while reporting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLike Erin told us, going up to dog walkers is the best way to talk to people because it lets off the pressure,\u201d Ruthie Gravelle of Columbus, Ohio, said. \u201cIt\u2019s an icebreaker. Before you start interviewing them, you can tell them that their dog is cute, which is a good way to connect with them. It makes it easier to get the interview started.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gravelle, along with a number of other cherubs, tried the technique out.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI interviewed a woman with a dog, and it made the interview ten times better because it eased things over,\u201d Mazzy Jensen of Clinton, Iowa, said. \u201cYou can ask to pet their dog and tell them that you\u2019re interviewing them now. Then, they\u2019re trapped.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

However, not all the cherub\u2019s interactions with dogs were paw-sitive. Meher Sareen, who is from London, was also interviewing a dog owner at the beach, when a dog suddenly bit her, she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey were running in the ocean, which was just the cutest thing to see. All of a sudden, a dog came up to me and bit me,\u201d Sareen said. \u201cIt\u2019s honestly not something I expected of the Evanstonian dog population, but I\u2019m still hoping to rebuild my connection with these furry creatures.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In their adventures around Evanston, cherubs had many encounters with the furry friends of the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":347,"featured_media":11176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,19],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[678],"class_list":["post-11578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-city","category-living-in-evanston"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":678,"user_id":347,"is_guest":0,"slug":"sachs26","display_name":"Skylar Sachs","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a5753a208a6e8d769dfa160daaa7b4e75818e93a240ac48803247d1b19d47b29?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Sachs","first_name":"Skylar","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/347"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11578"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12909,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11578\/revisions\/12909"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11578"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}