Emma's 2020 Portfolio

Emma’s Portfolio

Essay #1 This year started off rough but the paper continued to update the community, connect us, and somehow put us at ease for a few moments. In these strange times, I still ended up learning new skills, and techniques that help me conduct an effective virtual interview.

Due to the fact that we were stuck at home, and people are still hesitant about in-person interviews. So instead of doing basic email interviews, I’d set up a Zoom meeting or Face-Time to “physically” talk to my interviewee. It helped because I was able to ask follow-up questions or get clarification on something interesting they had said.

Due to the class starting online the overwhelming sense of deadlines has worn off a bit, but that doesn’t mean they still aren’t extremely important. When writing for the paper version of the CS Press editors really push for everything to be done by the deadline because we know that if things aren’t done in time then it wouldn’t end up in the paper. We really had to stress that to the new staff members and why once I get an article I immediately do research on credible sites and state writing the article. I then get quotes and move or add more information around the quotes. For me, it’s the easiest and fastest way to get an article done so that I’m not rushing to finish it at the last moment.

I’m very glad to have amazing editors in chief while also having other editors behind me on our first print issue of the year because this was my first time using Indesign. The program is so touchy, and difficult to understand especially when you’re thrown headfirst into the deep end. Luckily I had friends like Micheal and Ryan, who have more experience than me, show me the ropes and give me their honest feedback about my page’s overall design.

Ethics in journalism is everything. When people read a paper or news article they expect to be given the truth, not something a writer either made up or copy and pasted from another author. If you take all this time to plagiarize rather than simply putting in the time and effort to write it, you’re not smart, just lazy.

I’ve been dedicated to this paper ever since I joined and tried to pull my weight at every turn. I take articles when others won’t volunteer for them, ask other editors if there’s anything I can do to help, and above all get my articles in on time so that my fellow editors have one less thing to worry about. On production days I try to stay late or until the very end if I don’t have work so that I can give as much as can to the team.

Except for the multiple obvious problems that COVID came and smacked everyone across the face with, I didn’t encounter a lot of difficulties. I started on articles early, didn’t half-ass anything, and maneuvered my way through designing my first page. All that aside I still have difficulty with spelling and grammar due to dyslexia, but I’m working around that. I’ve got Grammarly to not only correct my own writing but also for the staff members who write for my page.

Essay #2 The best piece I’ve written for the physical paper was my opinion piece on Standardized testing. While my most significant piece for the online paper was my story on Senior Splash. Both had their ups and downs but I’m proud of both of them.

Firstly writing while juggling editing for my page, and using Indesign for the first time was more stressful than I anticipated.

Luckily I had an opinion piece meaning I didn’t have to worry about figuring out how to get interviews. But the topic was hard to write 500 words about. Yes, no student likes standardized testing but I had to go in-depth and explain why we don’t like it other than staying “we’re lazy students that don’t like doing tests.”

The research wasn’t hard; it was more or less finding the right way to input those facts or statistics so they didn’t intrepid the flow. Then came the rebuttal. That was hard because I didn’t want to destroy everything I had already established. Yet I managed to find to acknowledge the benefits of standardized testing while overshadowing it with the disadvantages.

Even though the first issue was difficult it was still easier to control than writing my Senior Splash article. At the time I was writing this article we were still not allowed to pull students out of class. So I got students from my English class and either quickly interviewed them before class or during passing period. My auto recordings turned out really bad because other students were talking around us, yet if I blared it and murdered my eardrums I could make out my interviewee’s conversation. Even then it was hard to get interesting quotes because the students didn’t seem to enjoy Senior Splash and were only answering my questions with one sentence responses.

On top of that, I couldn’t get an interview with Ms. Beverly.

Every time I emailed she never responded so I just went there during lunch hoping to catch her at a good time. I didn’t. I was patient and waited until she was done with her scheduled appointments. Then she asks me not to record her. My soul died. I never transcribed my interviewer’s quotes in real-time. Let alone when they talk extremely fast and I’m writing on my lap. But I managed to get a few good lines down while jogging others from memory.

Once I started writing it came together pretty quickly then I was met with another brick wall. Because this wasn’t something I could do research about, I had to substitute my statistics for one line transition paragraphs explaining the differences between past years and this year’s presentations.

After pushing through these complicated situations and still pulling full articles out of them only shows how resilient this paper is. Even though COVID, we continue to inform our students and print an illuminating paper.

Before

Best Work

After

A a D o w i f f

Essay #3

I’m proud of my spotlight on Nia because it was the first article I wrote for the online school year. On top of that I did all my interviews vertically, mostly over Instagram. I did have a challenging time finding an adult for this article, and when I asked Nia she told me no one helps her make jewelry so I was a rock stuck in a hard place. Luckily I have an amazing aunt who also makes jewelry that benefit’s wildlife sanctuaries. Comparing their similarities allowed me to tie them into the same article.

Another piece I’m happy with is Canvas’ story. Again this was an article I wrote while still online, I mainly relied on email or DM’s for interviews. Even though this isn’t my preferred method of interviewing it worked for this article. The interviewees were quick with their responses and I worked off little to know information about Canvas other than what I had learned from using the site. Still it got published and ended up a The last thing I’m pleased with is my sidebar for Creeker on Hidfull 400 word article. den in the Hills. So many things kept on getting canceled which constantly changed the topic of the sidebar. At the end of the day, Hidden in the Hills was the only thing that didn’t get canceled.

Even though it happened after the paper came out, there was enough information on it to write a roughly 300 word sidebar.

While juggling my page, staff writers and other stories I was very pleased that it came out well written.

Essay #4 We can all agree that 2020 was a rough year from not worrying to being through into a two months quarantine, then online school before finally returning to in-person class with a few different measures. I could deal with masks, and social distancing but not writing drove me insane.

Once we figured out a consistent writing schedule, the staff slowly started to get into gear while the editors were left with trying to wrangle them all. Even though the online paper went a lot quicker, articles were not getting published until weeks later. By then, the articles were not that relevant anymore. Or they didn’t get published at all. For instance, I have four articles that I wrote in online class and in-person that never got published.

I do not blame the editors. Our situation is not ideal, and we were doing the best we could with what we were provided. That being said, the print version was just as hard, perhaps even harder. We had staff writers completely disregard deadlines leaving editors like Ryan to cut one of his pages.

I was lucky that it did not happen to me, but Indesign still gave me a list of problems. Before this issue, I had

never used the program, and personally speaking, it’s very finicky, especially when I had too much to fit on my one page. Unforcentaly I had to cut someone’s work, and that slightly broke my heart. They worked hard on it, met the proper word count, and was in on time. But at the end of the day, it was cut. One less article helped make the page look less wordy, along with help from Ryan, Micheal, and Max S. I was able to come out with a good looking page.

I like my new position, even though some of the staff writers don’t take the paper as seriously as I did when I was a staff writer. I’ve never been popular, and being raised by an officer taught me that, above all, respect should be a superior’s number one priority. So far, I haven’t been disrespected, but I know that when writers don’t get their work in on time, it’s like they’re giving editors the finger.

Sometimes I just want to scream and say, “give just a little bit of a shit.” That’s not much to ask for, yet some guys in the class act like I’m asking them to give up their left leg and a kidney. When in reality, all they need to do is turn off their phone.

The Alpha is the last wolf in the group so that he can oversee the others. They watch to make sure no one gets left behind. Without the pack, then there is no alpha. It’s the same for the paper. Without great leaders like Max and Miah to keep the editors calm while watching to ensure that staff writers don’t stray very far from their tasks.

Even though the Alpha’s aren’t upfront, they still lead the pack.