Local Journalism Final Reflection
Coming into Local Journalism, I really thought I would just be taking the class to fulfill the credits in my major. I think I got a lot more out of the course than that.
I thought my #duluthplaces exploring assignment was a great way to “break the ice” for the course and get comfortable going out and essentially blogging a couple of days of exploring Canal Park. The photos in this post helped lay the groundwork of the importance of adding visuals to my other stories, for example, a photo on the top of the story and another visual later on.
For my #duluthplaces Beat Story, although the assignment was to write about a place, I’m happy how this story turned into a news story of the struggle of ice-time in Duluth and the UMD women’s hockey team being shuffled around because of a scheduling snafu. This story also helped increase my confidence in talking to strangers out on the street. I got this story published in The Bark. Working on this story also sparked my interest in covering more women’s hockey for UMD.
For my event story, although the UMD Baseball team only got to take the field for eight games because of the pandemic, the one thing I will always remember about working this story is that I interviewed the players first before I interviewed the coach … then the players told the coach that my questions were tough. I’ve always heard about reporters “needing to ask the tough questions,” so that put a smile on my face at the conclusion of the interview.” Another take-away from this story was the importance of researching background information before going into an interview. This story was published on LakeVoice News, although after the fact, I wish I would have reworked it slightly for umdbulldogs.com.
I think the pandemic actually made it a bit easier for me to find my social justice story, but also a bit harder at the same time to find sources. I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to report on when we first started cooking up ideas for our stories. This was my first story that was done, “all virtually.” As the hockey season was canceled, I saw a lot of other stories from other organizations that simply recapped the season and elaborated on how the situation the progressed. I wanted to focus on something different, so I wanted to reach out to fans to get their thoughts. I found these fans by making a Facebook post in a UMD Hockey fan group, where people first reached out to me, then I started the formal conversation and interviewing. Before this semester, I started reading The Athletic, where the stories don’t have word limits like typical newspapers. I felt this story mirrored that same concept.
Finally, for my profile story, I thought this was a great way to focus on the details while reporting a story. Additionally, the writing about a place assignment helped with this, especially as I chose something virtually that was directly related.
Another skill that I acquired from working these stories helped me with writing captions for photos, which is actually something that I didn’t really do before this. Overall, writing and editing these stories on my own helped give me the skills to do a “one-person show.”
Overall, I really think I got a lot of different skills from pitching stories, interviewing sources, adding visuals, writing stories and using social media to create Local Journalism.
