Capstone Participants

Will Cleveland

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Will Cleveland is a journalist and beer columnist at the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, New York. Cleveland is one of a handful of journalists that frequently covered local Black Lives Matter protests and rallies. As a former sports reporter, he compared covering these events similar to basketball games.

“Covering them [protests], for lack of a better term, it’s almost like you’re doing a play by play. I spent my first six years at the paper in sports so it’s almost similar because you’re live tweeting it. It’s similar to a basketball game because you’re trying to gather as much information as you can quickly,” Cleveland continued.

“You make observations, get video and it’s really important because people need to see why—in this case for these rallies—it drove thousands of people downtown and Jefferson Ave. Journalists need to be the eyes and ears of the community.”

Follow Will on Twitter.