Revision Pitch Medium Post: 2

For my story idea, I was first inspired by our class 7 lecture, called ‘creativity’. One of the ways to come up with an idea was to just go to Google and type in ‘find something for me to read’. Instead, I clicked on Google’s ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button at the bottom of the browser, and it takes you to a random page. The one that was randomly picked for me was “I’m feeling generous”. Then many, I mean MANY, charities popped up, ranging from helping Breonna’s Taylor’s case to helping African children in need. This then gave me the idea to look at local charities, and there’s a huge, very important one in my hometown. When everything in the world seemed like it was going crazy, most people tuned in on Netflix to watch a captivating docuseries called ‘Tiger King’ to help occupy their time. The series took the world by storm, and everyone talked about it on social media for days, mainly because of how wild the stories were that came from the docuseries. However, once the series ended and people found out one of the main people of the docuseries was arrested, they wondered what happened to all the tigers, because at the end of the day with all the crazy stories, animals still tug at people’s heartstrings. In my hometown of Keenesburg, Colorado, there’s a sanctuary called the Wildlife Animal Sanctuary. They are a nonprofit organization that takes in large cats and other large animals such as bears, camels, wolves, and lions. The docuseries was intriguing and made people more interested in zoos or sanctuaries that re-home large wild cats from abusive zoos to random people’s backyards. After the docuseries, many people and news outlets discovered that many of the tigers from Tiger King’s Joe Exotic’s zoo made their way out to rural Keenesburg, Colorado, to start and live a better life. My story will go into depth about how the Netflix series has affected the organization. With everything going on in the world, did they gain more popularity or more visitors just because of the series? Because they are nonprofit, did they have a jump in donations? Has the Netflix docuseries been a positive impact on the organization or negative impact? If there is any negative impact, is it due to the docuseries about how keeping animals in cages or sanctuaries is more harmful than keeping wild animals in the wild? Or what is the negative reasoning? And does there seem to be more support of the organization after the airing of the docuseries? I plan on visiting the sanctuary in my free time, since its basically in my backyard, and asking the staff members these questions and seeing if I can catch an interview with the owner, Pat Craig. I’ll take a tour, just like any other guest, and see the true Joe Exotic tigers and snap a few photos and record some clips of the facility and conduct interviews with different volunteers. I plan on being open with the organization with what I am doing and make it clear that I am supporting them, so I can gain their trust and get more information. Other questions I plan on asking are “Are people only coming to the sanctuary purely just to see Joe Exotic’s former tigers?” and “Are there more donations since the airing of the series, and if so, do people state that they only donate for the tigers that were shown on the series?” I plan on sharing the story to Facebook, mainly because of the people in my home town can read and share it and because the Wildlife Animal Sanctuary page has over 750,000 likes on their page, so hopefully it can gain some traction. I also plan on doing a little bit of background research so the viewers can get to know the sanctuary before jumping into how a Netflix series has impacted how the sanctuary is doing today, such as when and how the Wildlife Animal Sanctuary came to be and different ways people can help donate if they would like. There are different news articles about how the Wildlife Animal Sanctuary has received the tigers, so that could also help me give some more background information and make my story more credible.