Throughout my time in the journalism program at Miami, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what reporting was like. After completing this seminar though, I realize now that I had no idea how labor intensive reporting really is. I covered Fairfield City Schools for my beat, and at first, I had a lot of trouble generating story ideas, especially when we turned in the initial story memo, I had a lot of trouble coming up with six feasible story ideas. The school board elections were probably the biggest deal, so I thought the majority of my stories were going to center on that. After getting out and talking to different sources though, I really stretched my expectations of what kind of stories I would write while covering this beat. I had incredible luck contacting sources, and I’m so thankful for that because deadlines are stressful, as I’ve learned. What’s great about Fairfield is that it’s such a close, tight-knit community that it’s willing to help former students out anyway it can. My parents both have worked in the school system, so I was also lucky in that respect because I was able to better identify what sources I needed to use since I knew how a school system is laid out and who the key players are. In contacting them, I made sure to start early because I’m one of those people who can’t wait until the last minute to do things, so I think that also contributed to my success in sourcing. Overall, I would like to think I grew tremendously as a journalist over the course of this class because it felt like a real, professional reporting job, and that’s how I treated it. Further, I felt like I worked harder for this class than most other reporting classes I have taken here, and I took this one the most seriously. Since I am graduating soon, I think I have a better idea of what real reporting is going to look like should I decide to go that route.
-- Emily Stewart
Nov. 20, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment