Daniel Wheaton

Daniel Wheaton is a senior journalism and broadcasting major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He started his journalism career by joining the Daily Nebraskan as a reporter his freshman year. While he was a writer, he covered crime on UNL’s campus and in Lincoln and covered Nebraska’s Unicameral Legislature during the 2013 90-day session. In addition to writing, he worked on the copy desk, managed the paper’s social media and was the projects editor during the spring 2014 semester. In the fall, he will manage the paper’s breaking news desk as the online news editor, as the paper shifts from a print focus to online. He also interned at the Paragould Daily Press, Lincoln based AM radio station KFOR 1240, Silicon Prairie News, Nebraska News Service and USA Today College. Some of his work has also appeared in the speech and debate-based blog Loudspeaker and UNL’s Drone Journalism Lab. If a month has the letter “r” in it, Daniel is completing on UNL’s speech and debate team. He speaking forte is in limited preparation and public address events. During his speaking tenure, UNL won three Big Ten Conference championships, won three consecutive team championships at the Nebraska Intercollegiate Forensics Association tournament and consistently placed in the top 10 in the nation at the American Forensics Association National Individual Events Tournament. His favorite speech event, extemporaneous speaking, is tied to journalism. Speakers are given 30 minutes to prepare and give a 7-minute speech answering a question based on current events. He regularly judges high school speech tournaments in the Lincoln and Omaha area, and sometimes helps students revise their orations. When Daniel isn’t in a newsroom, class or practicing speech, he can usually be found lurking in a coffee shop, listening to obscure indie music and drinking a café au lait. After graduation, Daniel plans to continue to develop his data and investigative journalism skills.

Roads will be safer when cars can talk to each other

By Daniel Wheaton | August 28, 2014

MCLEAN, Va. – While Taylor Lochrane was driving through a heavy rainstorm in Virginia, the lack of visibility didn’t worry him. He pressed a few buttons on the Cadillac SRX Crossover’s console, allowing the vehicle’s cruise control to maintain a large gap between his car and the one he was following, preventing a possible crash. “The radar could see the car, even though I couldn’t,” he said. The Cadillac’s radar adds another layer to regular cruise control, making it able to react to the environment using what is called adaptive cruise control.