"Jo-Anna Burnett (at 12): OK, so is the reason why your wife left you is because you're affiliated with the Klan?
David Duke: No, it's not."
— Excerpt from David Duke interview
Jo-Anna K. Burnett
About me:
Jo-Anna Burnett has had a nose for news and investigative reporting since grade school when she interviewed former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke for a social studies project at 12 years old – on her own, she obtained his home phone number from the New Orleans White Pages, recording the interview with a tape recorder juxtapose a speakerphone.
Since then, she has reported for newspapers across the United States and around the world including The Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y., The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., The Baton Rouge Advocate, and the Shanghai Star in China during the SARS outbreak. She's also worked for two Pulitzer prize-winners, Russell Carollo, formerly of the Los Angeles Times and the Dayton Daily News, and former New York Times reporter and book author Rick Bragg.
Alone, she walked the estates of Belfast, Northern Ireland, to witness the Troubles firsthand, and watched Slobodan Milosevic cross-examine witnesses at his tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in the Hague, Netherlands, as a member of the public.
At Southeastern Louisiana University, Burnett made history as the first black president of the Press Club, the second oldest organization at the university next to the SGA.
David Duke Interview (1989) (For a transcript of the interview, visit: http://www.Jo-Anna.info/David_Duke_Interview_Transcript.html.)
Tangipahoa Restaurant Inspections Inspected (2006)
Since then, she has reported for newspapers across the United States and around the world including The Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y., The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., The Baton Rouge Advocate, and the Shanghai Star in China during the SARS outbreak. She's also worked for two Pulitzer prize-winners, Russell Carollo, formerly of the Los Angeles Times and the Dayton Daily News, and former New York Times reporter and book author Rick Bragg.
Alone, she walked the estates of Belfast, Northern Ireland, to witness the Troubles firsthand, and watched Slobodan Milosevic cross-examine witnesses at his tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in the Hague, Netherlands, as a member of the public.
At Southeastern Louisiana University, Burnett made history as the first black president of the Press Club, the second oldest organization at the university next to the SGA.
Journeyalism
Journeyalism
I chose Duke as my subject for my elementary, Audubon Montessori School, social studies fair – I did not have a premise or thesis, but assumed that popular public sentiment was not in favor of Duke’s run for office.
I videotaped interviews with my classmates at the only public Montessori elementary and middle school in Louisiana at that time. AMS had a racial makeup of about 95 percent white, 4 percent black and 1 percent or less of students of other ethnicities.
“How do you feel about David Duke? Would you vote for him if you could?” I asked my schoolmates. Duke received no words of support from the sixth and seventh graders.
With a tape recorder juxtaposed a speakerphone, I called and interviewed Duke on the telephone – I looked up his name in the city residential listings, obtained his home phone number and called him on a whim, first without prepared questions, then with. I relied on previously read articles for my interview.
This was my first experience with reporting and using live, physical sources, not stored encyclopedia or magazine articles, for my research.