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Champion Journalist Portfolio
Pitches​
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At the beginning of each production cycle, I pitch possible stories and flesh out the key components of what each article would look like. This allows me to think about the essential journalistic components -- the who, what, when, where, why and how -- and how they apply to my pitches. This process also gives me a chance to think about what makes it newsworthy and to develop an angle. This way, once I am assigned a story, I know exactly what I am writing and why.
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Q&A with the Superintendent​
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For my first issue as Editor-in-Chief, I interviewed our school district Superintendent and formed the interview into a Q&A. I did extensive research beforehand in order to be informed on the most newsworthy and critical issues facing the school district. When my questions were evaded, I was prepared to ask follow-ups. Throughout this process, it was my news literacy and ability to focus on the most important topics that allowed me to succeed in writing the Q&A.
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Media literacy assignment​
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During my first semester as Editor-in-Chief, I helped facilitate a class discussion about media literacy and ensuring that our staff members had a high-level understanding of what makes an article balanced, fair and relevant. Each staffer completed the assignment in the document (left) which required them to examine numerous pieces of award-winning high school journalism and evaluate the work from a media literacy standpoint.
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Class discussion about tensions in student journalism​
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Following conflict on numerous college campuses, such as Northwestern and Harvard, the ODYSSEY class participated in a full-class discussion about the state of student journalism in the U.S. It was extremely powerful to partake in a discussion, among fellow student journalists, about the significance of our work and the national context we must navigate as young reporters.
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*Click on image to view my notes and takeaways about the topic, which I wrote immediately preceding the class discussion
SCENES​
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Throughout my daily life I am constantly thinking about the newsworthiness of things going on around me in order to get a story out of anything I can. In this case, I was attending a mock trial competition and wrote a SCENE about the three seniors on the team.
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News articles​
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I have written a large volume of news articles during my time on the ODYSSEY staff. This has led me to be conscious about each story and its relevance and newsworthiness to our audience. In this story, I wrote about a community member announcing his intention to run for mayor and I was intentional about connecting it to our school by including information about his time as an educator in our school district. This is just one example of how I, as a journalist, have thought about the news value of an article in order to best tell the story for our audience.
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