Articles by Michelai Graham

About Michelai Graham
I’m currently a graduate journalism student at American University focusing in investigative reporting. I also work at the Urban Institute as a Digital Production Specialist, where I maintain the website and produce weekly newsletters. In the past, I interned with the Lansing City Pulse as a reporter and photographer and with Such Video as a social media coordinator.

How journalists use technology to tell stories

December 5, 2017 Michelai Graham 0

After the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., cities erupted in chaos. Philip Meyer, a reporter for the Detroit Free Press during the 1968 Detroit riots, published the Riot Commission Report, using data and social sciences to “count and sort and analyze the thoughts of that many people” to analyze race relations throughout the city. Scholars haven’t pinpointed the exact origin of data journalism. But Jennifer LaFleur, former director of computer-assisted reporting at ProPublica and current data editor at the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, said one of the earliest successes of using data and computers to tell stories was Meyer’s work for the Free Press.

How many sexual partners is too many?

October 30, 2017 Michelai Graham 0

There’s no perfect “body count” when it comes to sexual partners. A person’s sexual behavior can depend on various factors from economic status, to peer pressure to even the honest pursuit of finding the one for them. In the U.S., people experience 7.2 partners in their lifetime according to a survey conducted by SuperDrug, a health and beauty retailer in the United Kingdom. SuperDrug surveyed 2,000 people in the U.S. and the U.K. and found that Americans experience more sexual partners in their lifetime. The average number of sexual partners a person has varies by the country and in the U.S., even by state.

In DC, number of new HIV/AIDS cases halved since 2012

October 17, 2017 Michelai Graham 0

Washington, D.C., still leads the nation with the most people infected by HIV/AIDS, in spite of the growing number of prevention programs. Black Americans accounted for 45 percent of HIV diagnoses and 48 percent of AIDS diagnoses in the U.S. in 2015, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. More than half of those diagnosed were gay or bisexual men.

How global warming changes superstorms

September 19, 2017 Michelai Graham 0

The U.S. has experienced 70 major hurricanes in the past 20 years. Many experts believe global warming could be causing superstorms to occur more frequently, but study results are too premature to make that call. Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma occurred within weeks of each other and scientists are trying to figure out how these two major hurricanes occurred so close together. To discover new trends, experts say we must first look at the past.