Daniel Guerrero
Editor
Reflections
News
This semester, I wrote about 3 official news article while 2 practice ones. In the beginning, I struggle writing them where I have often gotten a C on one of them over time. However, I sorta got the hang as we begin to write more news articles where I transition on receiving a C to a B.
Sports
Unlike news articles, sports articles are somewhat different. Most sports articles have a lead that explains the score, date, time, and players that impacted the game over time. In addition, the writer is able to add in their own personal opinion about the game. This further allows the reader to be able to use their sense of creative writing compare to news articles.
Feature
Feature articles allow to writer to utilize their sense of creativity compare to the news and sports articles. A feature article is about a certain topic that is taking place in the world right now in a more in-depth way. In fact, topic can connect to any category such as entertainment and business. In addition, the lead and formatting in these kinds of articles is entirely different where the writer is not allowed to utilize the inverted pyramid at all.
Fall semester
In the fall semester, the class went over writing about news, sports, and feature/profile articles. I really had a fun time writing about these articles due to requiring a collaboration with my classmates where we all wrote and edit articles together. Out of all the articles that we wrote, I enjoy feature/profile articles the most even though I struggle with it most. In fact, I was able to improve my writing skills in this class where I further apply to it writing essays over time.
Opinion
I love writing opinion articles where I am able to construct arguments in a way I wanted it to be. For example, this semester I wrote about how the Inclusion Rider won’t affect the diversity of Hollywood. To further explain this idea, I was able to use different kinds of evidence from multiple articles to support my argument. This is similar to an essay, however, the structure of it is different. For an essay, the writer needs to write a TPR thesis statement in the introduction paragraph.
Review
Out of all the articles I wrote for the past year in my Journalism 1 class, I love writing movie review articles. I am able to write and construct my opinion on the films that I strongly like or dislike. Also, I like how you are able to judge on the film’s cinematography, directing, production design, etc. and connect to your overall impression of it over time.
Documentary
I enjoyed creating documentaries with my peers because we are able to send a message to society about a certain topic that is being discussed in the world. For example, my group and I are creating a documentary about the different kinds of fashion at schools. Therefore, we needed to outline our documentary in the form of a script.
Spring semester
Overall, the spring semester was good as the fall semester. I was able to learn how to write new different kinds of articles, which are the opinion articles, review articles, and documentaries. However, the best articles I ever wrote were the movies reviews. In class, we watched “The Perks of being a Wallflower” and “Shrek 2”. Afterward, we wrote for movie reviews and were graded by my Journalism 1.
September Issue Reflection
Based on the issue, I really like the front cover, where I felt the artist did a great job on drawing the character that she is trying to portray with the use of pastel colors. This front cover had a nice introduction to the our 2019-2020 plaid press issues. Besides the front cover, the newspaper covered a variety of topics that students can learn from, especially the school and their changes to their education system.
November Issue Reflection
I really like this issue, where it had a variety of student profiles to choose and read from. I felt that we should do this more often, as it engages students to read the newspaper more often. Besides the student profiles, I felt that we did really go, in terms of designs on the newspaper. For example, I felt that the front cover was well designed, where the trees and grass goes along well with the Envirothon article. Thus, leading for more students to be engaged and wanting to read it over time.
December Issue Reflection
As for the December Issue, I felt that we used a variety of colors in this time around. For example, the features did a great job on mixing with the black and blue colors of the articles. This also applies to the news editors as well, where they were able to add a light blue color on the front cover, instead of having a white background. If the front cover would have a white background, it would have been very unappealing to the students to grab a copy and read.
Fall Semester Issue Reflection
I really like the articles that I wrote for the issues, where I had a lot of fun in general. Besides that, there were a lot of designs that made the article to stand out to the student. Thus, it lead to them reading these interesting articles even more.
Singular Print Issue Reflection
I really love how we did the singular print issue because most of the stories were very appealing to the students, like the teachers going on the worst dates and Granada’s Best Dance Crew (GBDC). Speaking about teachers going on the worst dates, I like the feature page of it because it really gave readers much of a valentine’s aesthetic with the big heart, filled with dating images.
Digital Issues Reflection
At first, I was sad about the fact that we had to dismiss our upcoming issues for the rest of the semester. However, I thought that we were organized about it due to everyone turning and editing articles on time. Also, I like how we layout deadlines for some writers who are willing to sign up for, as it will help the editors out on what articles they will need to read in the folder.
Spring Semester Reflection (2)
As for a semester as a whole, I’m glad that we were able to still write articles for the web after the fact that we could no longer publish an issue due to the coronavirus. However, there were fun moments that I had with my classmate before the day we had to depart to quarantine, such as collaborating with other editors to make an article better and going out to eat when we publish issues.