Reporting and Writing

Writing long feature stories was never a primary role of mine on staff, but during the last semester of my junior year, I took on the leadership and writing about the retirement of the long-time drama teacher at our school, along with some other staffers. Throughout the process, I was able to lead my team and produce a feature on a beloved and impactful teacher at our school. I wrote the story, as well as took photos and created multimedia for the package.

One of the first written pieces I got published in the magazine was this blog on my struggle with self-confidence. Writing this blog was challenging because it was a very personal piece that I believe a lot of people can relate to. I wanted to ensure I properly conveyed my emotions through my writing. I did both the writing and visuals for the personal blog.

After the release of Mac Miller’s posthumous album, I decided to review the album to go in the Cultural Buzz section of our magazine. With his death and impact on the music industry, I wanted to ensure I synthesized the album both respectfully and honestly. I paid attention to the overall tone of his album, as it was supposed to be a follow-up to “Swimming”. Through my review, I focused on respectfully reviewing Miller’s lovely album.

One Book Athens was a community-wide initiative that was brought to my school. To cover the story, I interviewed various sources on the creation of the initiative, as well as how it was being carried out by teachers. Throughout the writing process, I had to adjust and conduct more interviews to ensure a well-rounded coverage of the story because at the school level the teaching was different between our middle school and high school.

Last year Clarke Central High School got a new college adviser and I covered the position change. It was somewhat challenging to write because it was one of the first stories I did remotely through Zoom. However, his role as college adviser was increasingly important due to all the changes to college applications for the 2020-2021 school year. Later on, once we returned to in-person instruction, I was also able to photograph him for our website.

After the 2019-2020 school year, our school switched to a block schedule. I covered the transition from the family engagement specialist’s point of view. Because this story had a large impact on the school and had been covered in a variety of ways, it was challenging to make sure I was including a new perspective with my story. In the end, my story focused on how the big transition would be facilitated for students and families.

This blog about me living with a parent with a chronic disease was the first piece of writing I ever got published. As a freshman, writing this story was very intimidating to pursue because I had never been published before. However, after writing it and working with various editors on staff, I was able to get this personal blog published. My goal was to create a piece that students who faced similar challenges could relate to.

After Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give, announced she was releasing a new book, I knew I had to review it. During my review, I focused on the plot and storytelling, as well as the overall message. With Thomas’ book often having an underlying message about social justice amongst youth and racial and social inequalities, I wanted to be sure I fully understood her purpose and expressed that in my review.

During my sophomore year, I wrote this new piece on our program’s attendance at the Georgia Scholastic Press Association fall conference. The piece had a very quick turnaround, so I spent a whole day interviewing presenters and attendees from the conference, writing and editing. This story was one of the first big timely news stories that taught me the importance of writing quickly and thoroughly, to get out new content as soon as possible.