News Writing
Students involved in racist social media incident
This article outlined the details of a racist incident that occurred at my school as well as the district's response and was published shortly before my feature piece about experiences with racism. It was a valuable learning experience because we had to work with a cautious administration while also having inside information from victims of the incident. The story taught me a lot about protecting sources and the ethics of not using their quotes if they say not to.
Beloved student passed away Nov. 20
While brief, this is one of the more serious stories I've ever written. I interviewed a handful of students who were close to the student that passed away as well as the creator of a donation site for the student and consolidated their messages and memories of him in an obituary-style news article. Writing this taught me about being careful to share the news and the students' messages without sharing information that the family didn't want to be public, such as his cause of death.
Bull's Board Corner: January 11
This piece was one of a series of articles I had for informing the student body of what the district Board of Education does. This series was the basis of my news writing senior year; digestible but detailed writing that turned extremely long and often tedious meetings into a five-minute read for the student body to understand exactly what happened and what decisions were made each time.
The Board minutes did a similar job, but they were full of confusing jargon and were posted days after the meetings. I posted mine within 24 hours of meetings and made sure that they were easy to follow, only including information that was relevant to students. Before meetings, I also asked my followers on social media if they had questions and included those answers in my articles. I wrote 13 Board Corner articles my senior year and they were among the most viewed articles we published; huge policy decisions were made at most of these meetings and these articles filled an important gap.