Reporting & Writing

At heart, I am a writer. Any chance I get, I am pulling out my recording app and getting ready to interview and pull together a story. I am, first and foremost, a news-writer, and I can most often be found writing news briefs or investigative stories for our website or newsmagazine, but I have also found a love for more creative writing, like profiles, and more opinionated writing, like editorials and reviews. I am always looking to push myself and find a new story in my community to tell.

Features

Dean's direction

This story is a profile focusing on one of our school administrators, Latinda Dean, and her path to education. It was the first time I’d written a feature profile, and I read a lot of old profiles (and attended an NSPA profile session) to wrap my head around the organization and style required for the piece. Read the story in print to the right, or click here to read it online.

Freedom in creation

This is a 900 word profile on a Clarke Central art student, Anastasia Mack. With this story, I pushed myself to write more creatively and focus more on human interest, which was outside of my usual news-writing.

Transformation through speech

This is a 300-word highly stylized profile on Clarke Central senior John Alexander Garcia, who does the announcements at Clarke Central and makes motivational videos. I had an in-depth, 45 minute interview with him and then had to pick out a central "nugget" of his story and distill it into a short profile. Click the photo to read the story.

News

Carrying the community

I wrote an in-depth hard news story about the impact that the pandemic had on our local economy. I interviewed 12 people for the story, including the mayor, the county manager, and several local business-owners, to ensure that all sides of such a multi-faceted issue were covered. I worked hard to structure the story so that all necessary information was included without being overwhelming. The result was a 2,000 word news story that I worked on for three months. Click the picture to read the story on page 14.

Engaging with gender

This piece was an in-depth news story about the disparities in how female and male students are taught in classes, that won a Superior at Ball State University's J-Day. I interviewed a professor at the UGA Department of Women Studies to dig deeper into the issue, and then talked to students, teachers, and admin (making sure to get people of both genders) to explore the issue at my school. It was published both in print and on the web. Click on the photo to read it on the web.

504/IEP story

I wrote a story about Individualized Education Programs and 504 plans at my school, and how digital learning impacted them. In the story, I had to include information about both 504 plans and IEPs, while ensuring that the information about either one did not imply something incorrect about the other. Because of the delicate nature of the topic, I interviewed five experts on the topic and made sure to fact-check each piece of information with each of them.

CMS community coverage

The school district removed a well-loved principal from a middle school without warning, and the community responded quickly. I wrote coverage on a public Zoom meeting where members of the middle school talked to representatives from the district. It is a bit more of an in-depth news story, but I wrote it in two days to get it out while it was still timely. I had to be careful keep my story balanced, and represent all sides without straying into gossip or hearsay. Click on the photo to read the story on our website.

Q&A: Giving women a voice

I interviewed the president of our school’s Women and Gender Studies club about the club’s mission, their Trunk-Or-Treat fundraiser, and her thoughts on gender and feminism for a Q&A. Click on the photo to read it.

Increasing accountability

For a story about an app Clarke County was trying to push that allowed students to send tips directly to the police, I tried to get an interview with the Clarke County School District Head of Security. I couldn’t reach him by email, and eventually was able to get an interview with him by reaching out to his wife. With his voice in the story, I was able to make it more than just a news brief, and go deeper into the reasons behind why it had been implemented.

Connecting alerts

My beat for the 2021 fall semester was the Clarke Central Administration. This was one of the most difficult beats, because the administrators were difficult to access, and also one of the most important, because with the administration, it dealt with and addressed critical issues around the school. For this beat, I wrote about new security badges that teachers and administration were wearing to connect to each other. Click on the photo to view the story.

Opinions

No HOPE for students

For our editorial unit in Journalism 1, I wrote this editorial about HOPE scholarships. I didn’t know a huge amount about how HOPE worked, so I spent a lot of time researching it and getting edits from facilitators and peers in the Journalism 1 class, and got it published in the Viewpoints section of the print magazine.

Be the change you wish to see

My journalism class attended the 2019 Hunter-Holmes lecture, an event held each year in honor of the first Black students to attend UGA. I saw Monica Kauffman Pierson, a barrier-breaking Black television journalist speak, and wrote a blog about how the experience inspired me. Click on the photo to read the story.

Review: The Fork, the Witch & the Worm

The Fork, the Witch & the Worm was a new book published as an accompaniment to the. I wasn’t overly impressed with the book, and writing the review allowed me to develop my critical voice as an opinion writer. Click on the photo to read the story.

Head to Head: Spider-Man: No Way Home

A staff member wrote a review of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which I edited and then had strong opinions about, so I wrote a response review, and we published our conflicting opinions in a head-to-head. With this review, I exaggerated my opinions so they would work better for a head-to-head, and would contrast better with the other review.

Review: Butterfly yellow

We needed an additional blurb for the Cultural Buzz section of the magazine, which features short reviews on different things. I read Butterfly Yellow, a book we had just had an author visit about, and wrote a review on it.

We are better than this

After a highly publicized fight, and a large amount of debate about violence in my school district, I wrote this editorial about how my community should be more constructive in their criticism of the school district, and be more supportive in working towards solutions instead of tearing it down. I made a lot of multimedia to support it and go along with it, so it would really pop on the web. Click the photo to read the story.

Sports

Preview: CCHS vs Buford

I had the basketball beat in the Spring 2020 semester. This was a preview of a game, which I interviewed the head coach for and got the names of several student leaders on the team, who I reached out to and got an interview with. I sat through one of their practices before the game and took photos for the story. Click on the photo to read the story.

CCHS vs. Buford girls varsity tennis preview

I also had the girls’ tennis beat during the 2020 spring semester. This story is a preview of one of their upcoming matches. The beginning of their season was rained out, so I had to adapt my angle a bit to address that. Click on the photo to read the story.

COVID Tennis brief

This news brief is about how COVID affected the tennis season, effectively cutting it short. I talked to the coach and several players about how they felt about COVID and the premature end of the season, specifically getting a senior voice to talk about their feelings of not getting to finish their final season. Click on the photo to view the story.

CCHS vs. Buford girls varsity tennis preview