Journalism for Spring 2023 in Review

I was able to meet almost all of my goals for this term and progress my abilities in news writing significantly. My greatest accomplishment for the year, and not only the term, was my sports article format. My writing also became more concise as I was able to break large paragraphs into smaller ones as a habit. This allowed me to develop a precision in directing my storytelling that allowed me to explain multiple concepts successively. My improvement of nut graph, leads, and captivating intros was certainly developed along this term, and I strongly feel that much of my writing now competes at a professional level. 


Goals from the Beginning of the Term:


"I think that my first goal for the term is to create a format for my research summary pieces, because I love to read peer-reviewed journals and present the information from them in a simple format that is easy for persons to understand who have a limited education in the topic at hand."


It is interesting to reflect on my first goal because I accomplished something perpendicular to this in formulating a format for writing sports articles. I was able to create a pretty good format for asking interview questions and writing news stories as well. I did not create a shorthand for research articles or summaries, but I feel that my contributions towards other types of writing progressed my abilities in journalism sufficiently. By the end of the term I was able to write sports articles in 10 or 20 minutes, and also able to add meaningful statistics and descriptive imagery as well as captivating nut graph and strong leads. 


"My second goal is to write 10 pieces for the Commuter over the course of the term and expand my portfolio of Journalism. Now that I'm the news editor for the commuter, I have a much bigger role in helping determine the materials that will be selected for inclusion in the printed edition will be."


I was able to write about 9 or 10 pieces for the Commuter, and ended up exactly where I wanted to be with respect to developing my professional abilities and writing skills with respect to the newspaper. My time as news editor of the Commuter was incredibly enjoyable and I'm glad that I developed the ability to find news stories that I did over each week of the term. I would have enjoyed interacting with other members of the staff more, but as the scheduling of zoom meetings was not conducive to my schedule, this proved to be difficult to implement. I also wanted to help select more news stories for the printed edition, and ended up collaborating with multiple authors on helping assign and coordinate such stories, so this goal was definitely met. 


"My third goal for the term is to create a format for other types of writing, including op-eds and opinion pieces, as well as scientific literature reviews and sports articles. I think that these are very accomplishable goals and will simply require devoting the time necessary to creating their formats."


I was able to work on a format for opinion pieces and formats, so this goal was definitely accomplished. The sports article format was definitely the most detailed and thought out, but this one can also serve as a guide for working on other formatting. I worked with Rob on the style guide, and though we were never able to formally sit down and flesh out the specifics of what we wanted the style guide to look like, it was still incredibly beneficial to discuss and tinker with that project on my own. It will help me create my own newspaper someday. 

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