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Champion Journalist Portfolio
Before Baldwin
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We had a news staffer take on this story about the controversy when human remains, thought to be of formerly enslaved peoples, were found beneath a UGA building. Unfortunately, the staffer had to leave staff and I was tasked with taking on the article. I worked with his old transcriptions, did several new interviews of my own, did extensive historical research and fact checking, and then re-wrote the story. Through this process I learned a lot about working with old materials, paying careful attention to facts and covering sensitive topics.
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Fighting against opioids​
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This story was an unexpected but important one in my journalistic career. I did not pitch the story, but was assigned it without any knowledge of the issue. I had to conduct extensive research to be knowledgeable about the topic and then conduct numerous interviews, sometimes with high-profile sources, to get the story I needed. It was a valuable and enriching experience to write about such an important issue and have the opportunity to examine it from both a legal and a human perspective.
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Confronting history​
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I wrote this story during a contentious time in Athens when there was frequent debate about the Confederate monument Downtown. This story required me to interview activists, historians, UGA administration, community members, members of Confederate organizations, and a range of other people. I also had to do extensive research in order to fact check the historical information. Writing this story opened my eyes to the realities of my community's history, and I learned a lot about how to handle sensitive topics.
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A passion for fashion​
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This profile is one of my favorite stories I've ever written because, as someone who typically writes news, it was fun to explore a different type of writing and allow myself to be more stylistic. I had a two hour interview with the subject of my article, Havilland, and we got to build a relationship and I felt like I truly got a sense of who she was before writing this profile.
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Growing with Gorham
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To kick off my sophomore year on ODYSSEY, I pitched a story about our school's new associate principal Amanda Gorham. I had extensive interviews with her, her colleagues, her high school teacher, students and her sister in order to get a complete understanding of her and her work. Until this point I had largely written news stories that were impersonal, so this was a valuable experience where I learned how to get to know my sources and how to tell the full story of a person. This story won All-Georgia Feature Profile from the Georgia Scholastic Press Association and second place in Newspaper Personality Features from the Southern Interscholastic Press Association.
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Rethinking retakes
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At the beginning of the 2017-18 school year, I was hearing from all of my teachers about the new testing retake policy. Many students were frustrated by the new policies and I decided to pursue the topic further. I also conducted a poll of the student body to add an informative multimedia element.
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Making the grade​
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During my freshman year on staff I took on a news feature about the recently released College and Career Readiness Performance Index scores. This story taught me a lot about news writing and how to make a complex issue accessible to our audience. This was also one of the first stories for which I created multimedia elements to accompany the story.
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No longer neutral​
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I wrote this news feature story about the repeal of net neutrality, which was a national issue, and I localized it by exploring how it would affect the Athens community.
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Smiling her way to
sophomore year
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This is an example of a stylized story I have written, which pushed me beyond my typical news-style stories. This story required a long, intimate interview in order to fully understand my source. I then chose a specific aspect of her to focus the story on in order to build a cohesive and powerful story.
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