Two seniors and roommates join Sara Schleede on her audio road trip
Lawson Freeman and Grace Ann Hornfischer, two roommates and journalism seniors at UT-Austin, are joining Sara Schleede to help her complete the podcast about Interstate 35 as part of their senior capstone. Sara is a fellow senior at UT and is the host and director of this project. She created this podcast because of her lifelong love of road trips and hopes her audience will listen and learn something new about Texas, whether they’ve never visited the state or have lived there their whole life. Though the podcast was originally planned to span the length of the highway from Laredo, Texas, to Duluth, Minnesota, the COVID-19 pandemic shortened this audio road trip to the stretch existing in Texas. As Grace Ann and Lawson are Lone Star State natives, Grace Ann hailing from Austin and Lawson from Dallas, the pair are excited to learn more about the state they call home and the highway they’ve grown up crossing.
In their first week on the podcast, Grace Ann and Lawson were tasked with familiarizing themselves with the work that has already been done on this podcast. This included looking through research notes, reviewing the current outlines for different episodes and thinking about how to reach out to dream sources for this podcast. With the help of Sara, they also each decided on a podcast episode to focus on for the beginning of this semester.
Lawson will be adding to the episode detailing the oil bust and focus on tourism in the city of Cotulla. In this episode, Sara would like to include conversations with oil field workers in the town as well as some of its interesting history, including the fact that former President Lyndon B. Johnson taught 5th, 6th and 7th graders there after his freshman year of college. Lawson will be tasked with reaching out to those who can provide more information on this city’s turn to tourism and the influence I-35 and the COVID-19 pandemic have had on business. She will also continue Sara’s research on this area, thinking of other ways to report on Cotulla and other characters to include in the episode.
Grace Ann is focusing on episode two about the Chisholm Trail and the history of Black cowboys in Texas. Stereotypes drive how many people see the world, and this episode will challenge the John Wayne stereotype that dictates our vision of cowboys. The Chisholm Trail ran from Texas to Kansas and during the Civil War era and was used to drive livestock out of ranches in Texas. Throughout the 1800s, slaves made up a significant portion of the cattle workers in the American west, and after emancipation it was one of the only jobs available to African Americans. For this episode, Sara wants to explore the lives of specific Black cowboys and bring their story to the forefront. Grace Ann will conduct research and help to extract new information about Black cowboys to contribute to the podcaste episode.
This is the first podcast project Grace Ann and Lawson have worked on, and they are looking forward to learning new skills, such as audio editing and marketing strategies, and can’t wait to see this podcast published.
