MEJO 153 – Writing and Reporting
This class consisted of nothing new to me, considering my background in writing, but it gave me a great opportunity to write in more styles and learn more about various aspects of journalism. Here are a few of my favorites from the class.
These will all be in the forms of files to open in a new tab.
This was an assignment to “Live Tweet” a lecture our teacher gave us. The lecture was based on invasion of privacy and our teacher’s personal experience with it. We did not publish these tweets, but it was an exercise to help us learn how to keep up with the speaker and write only the essentials to the story.
This was an assignment to find a person involved in local media, interview them, and then write a feature article on them. I decided to interview Dannye Romine Powell and Lew Powell, a married couple who have spent years at The Charlotte Observer on their respective desks. I enjoyed getting these interviews and writing this story, and I hope I told their story with the paper well enough.
This was an assignment to interview peers from our class on their experience with the COVID-19 pandemic. I interviewed a transfer student, and I think that I helped show the stress she felt as well as her specific experience. I liked chatting with her about being a transfer and what she thought after UNC’s decision to close down after two weeks.
This was an assignment to take someone we know and interview them about something interesting that they do/have done. I focused on a childhood friend who is currently a swimmer at the University of Pittsburgh. I also interviewed her mom and her sister for extra perspectives, and I’m proud of the way I reflected her through her quotes as well as my personal words.
This was an assignment that, in normal times, would’ve required us to go out and find people walking around Chapel Hill to interview. Since I didn’t have the chance to do that, I found friends of mine who were interested in answering a quick question and gave me a good interview. The subject I decided to write about was what students thought schools should do next semester regarding COVID-19. I was not a huge fan of the style of this story, but now I have experience writing one and would be more comfortable doing it in the future.