Please Do Now:
- I want you to reflect on the article writing process as you have experienced it so far. What went well for you? What obstacles did you encounter? What did you find easier – reporting or writing? Why? Your response should be short – I want you to write a longer piece for homework tonight.
Today, students will:
- Watch the first half of All the President’s Men.
- Make a list of “Black Eyes” and “Feathers in the Cap” – i.e., what did Woodward and Bernstein do well when reporting the story? What did they do poorly?
Tonight’s homework is:
- Write a one page reflection on the process of writing your first article. This should be a “behind the scenes” story behind the story. It is fine to use the first person (First I did this, but that didn’t work then I had to do this…) Write about what went well, what didn’t, what you want to work on next time, what you learned in the process, and what you think you still need to learn. It is also FINE to give me suggestions on what I can do better – I take constructive criticism well.
21 responses so far ↓
allisonnovack // September 29, 2008 at 4:59 pm |
While writing my story, it was difficult to find Coach Jimenez since he is always busy being the head football coach. I eventually found him for a brief interview. I wanted to interview the captain of the team, but he was actually out of town and hard to reach. Some of the responses I got though, from Coach Speigelman and the players were exactly what
allisonnovack // September 29, 2008 at 4:59 pm |
Exactly what
allisonnovack // September 29, 2008 at 5:01 pm |
…I wanted. (sorry for the many comments.)
I found the actual reporting of the story easier. It was hard for me to figure out an unbias and flowing sounding way of writing the article.
lenac2011 // September 29, 2008 at 5:03 pm |
The actual writing of the article was what went well for me. Some of the obstacles I encountered were the interviews because most of the people didn’t give the answers that I was looking for. To me, writing the article was easier because once I started, it all seemed to come together.
jessicaw2010 // September 29, 2008 at 5:04 pm |
As I was writting my article I found it easy to put it together like all the information and quotes. It thought it was hard to make the article flow and also I was told that my article was bias and I didn’t know how to make it unbias. I thought it was definetly easier to report than to write.
laurenpeterson1 // September 29, 2008 at 5:05 pm |
I think writing the article is easier than interviewing. With interviewing, you have to know what to say and be quick with follow-up questions. Writing, on the other hand, comes more naturally to me. I’m good with words, and know how to disguise my opinions well. I havent exactly gotten used to the writing proccess yet and its difficult for me to interview a person 1 day and then the next, transcribe what they said.
Eventually with time I’ll get used to it, but as of write now, I only need time.
7y13r // September 29, 2008 at 5:05 pm |
I had quite a bit of trouble with the actual reporting. I’m a naturally shy person, so talking to people and jamming a recorder in their face is not easy. The writing was incredibly easy for me, as I’m a natural writer. I was able to turn the little I had into an informative article. I had had some background information, so I was able to build on that with quotes from my sources.
RayL2012 // September 29, 2008 at 5:06 pm |
While writting my story i had the difficulty of getting interviews in a very short time period, because of that restraint i was unable to attend the meetings and unable to talk to students (although i did talk to one student but he did not want to be mentioned). what was good,though was that i was able to get alot of information from the teachers that i interviewed and was able to include alot about their clubs. I found that writting the story was easier then the interviews because with the interviews i had to track down the teachers and figure out when their clubs were and i could talk to the people in the clubs
brittanywaserstein // September 29, 2008 at 5:06 pm |
Overall the interviews and writing of my article went well for me. I think writing it was a lot easier then getting the interviews. All of my interviews went well besides for my interview on Ms. Sahwell because she was not in school for about a week and I had to interview her last minute by email. Otherwise all my other interviews were easy.
Feliciadejean // September 29, 2008 at 5:07 pm |
Finding students and having time to interveiw them was the easiest part of the whole interveiew process. Trying to get teachers to take time out of there already busy days was the hardest. Now because teachers have largers classes they spend lunchs either relaxing or grading papers.
jessekirk11 // September 29, 2008 at 5:08 pm |
In writing my article, I encountered both accomplishment and obstacles, happiness and sadness, jubilance and deep depression. At first, I found difficulty deciding what to write about, but I also had trouble finding the proper sources to interview. After my interviews, I realized that I didn’t have enough concrete information on which to write about, so I had to do more independent research. However, in the end, putting everything down on paper was actually the easiest part. Having a strong basis of knowledge helped me write a clear, comprehensive journalistic masterpiece.
rachelcoller // September 29, 2008 at 5:09 pm |
While writing my article, there were many obstacles that I had to overcome. First, it took a very long time to get in touch with Dr. Sidener. After I called her at least twice a day, I was finally able to interview her over the phone in the middle of the office while she was in her car. My next obstacle was finding out what the Drivers ED program was going to consist of. I didn’t find out the answer until yesterday. The easiest part of writing my article was interviewing Coach Sims, I was able to go during class. Luckily I had gone to interview him while he wasn’t too busy, so I was able to interview him right away. Writing the article was much easier. The article was easy because all I had to do was take the information and type it up onto the computer. Reporting was difficult because acquiring the information was nearly impossible.
nadineg2012 // September 29, 2008 at 5:09 pm |
The only real difficulty I experienced while writing this article was figuring out where to get started and who I had to speak to because I knew about as much about the trust as the rest of the class: nothing. It wasn’t a problem though because everyone I spoke to was really nice (even after I had emailed them two or three times with questions), and had plenty of contacts to give me. In fact, I wound up with more people to speak to then I needed, so I actually had to pick and choose who was worth interviewing. I definitely thought that the actual writing of the article was easier, because it was pretty stressful trying to find time to meet with busy people like the coordinator for the CM Service Partnership, and because once I had all of the information I needed, the rest pretty much just fell into place.
LyssaG2011 // September 29, 2008 at 5:09 pm |
I wrote an article about SGA, an organization that I am involved in. After conducting just a couple interviews, I realized why it is a general rule NOT to report on things that you’re involved in and decided that I will never do it again. It’s difficult to report about something that I’m involved in because I felt biased as I was interviewing students.
A difficulty I came across was finding time to interview any adults, which was why I didn’t include any.
In this case, I think it was easier to report because I didn’t have to put in that much effort since I interviewed mostly people I was familiar with. If I had interviewed all the people I had wanted, it would have been much easier to write the article because I would have had more information and better quotes.
kevins2011 // September 29, 2008 at 5:09 pm |
Writing an article on the AP test scores was a difficult but rewarding project. I had trouble finding the AP test scores because many AP teachers didn’t know where the scores were kept. Finally, Mr. Weiss told me that Mrs. Sevillanos had them. Once i had this essential information, it was not difficult for me to finish my article. I had a much easier time writing my article than I did reporting because reporting consists of many interviews, sorting through quotes, and chasing down information.
alicel2011 // September 29, 2008 at 5:09 pm |
The writing process for my story was challenging. First I wanted to write about how the number of students in Beach high had increased because of it’s new grade. That did not work out because i could not find kids who had moved out bause of that reason. Most of the people who had moved to the school was because they had moved from the place where they were living . So then i decided that i was just going to write about the school’s new grade. This was much easier beccause i was able to get more quotes than the first planned one. For me it was easier reporting because it was just asking questions rather than trying to put it on paper.
carmenk2012 // September 29, 2008 at 5:10 pm |
While writing my first ever professional article, I found that the actual process of writing the article and putting all of my hard work together was the part that went well for me. I found that interviewing was the most difficult. Setting up meetings and only being able to take a few lines out of a 15 minute conversation was the hard part. I found that writing was easier for me, because I have always loved writing. Since it was the fun part, it went easier. I also found that setting up meetings and getting in touch with people of authority in the school was difficult.
Kelsey Sumalla // September 29, 2008 at 5:10 pm |
While writing my article I experienced many difficulties, like scheduling interviews. At first I wasn’t able to contact anyone from the MBSH website. All the emails bounced back to me 2 days later. Then, I went to each teacher and student and scheduled an interview that way. The one person I had the most difficulty with was Mr. Patrice. He was extremely busy the day I had planned to interview him, even though I already made an appointment with him. I ended up missing part of Journalism class coming out empty handed. That day I spoke to him before he left and we scheduled an interview for the next day, but he was busy again! There were about 5 students already waiting to speak to him when I got there. I waited 15-20 minutes and then left because I was going to miss my next class. There was only 1 student waiting when I had come the day before so I knew I wasn’t going to get to him in time for my next period. I came back again during lunch but he wasn’t there. I think that interviewing people was easier then part writing the actual article, but scheduling my interviews wasn’t easy.
hrynor // September 29, 2008 at 5:10 pm |
While writing my article, I found that writing the actual article was not nearly as challenging as scheduling and conducting interviews. Not only was it difficult to get the actual interviews, but I was also very shy making it more challenging for me to interview people. I had to overcome obstacles such as not being able to get interviews with people so interviewing others with the same knowledge of the topic.
madisonjsanders // September 29, 2008 at 5:16 pm |
Learning about the process was exciting and went well for me, but for my next article I plan to stay up to date, if not ahead of myself.
I did not complete all of my work on the given dates, and therefore this article was very difficult. I found the reporting easier than the writing because i found difficulty in making my sentences flow together.
patrickquinlan // September 29, 2008 at 6:28 pm |
While reporting, I found that the hardest part was definitely interviewing people. Waiting to contact Sidener was not that easy, nor was trying to find students to interview. I did think that the actual writing of the story wasn’t too difficult.