Week #2

 This week, I sat in front of my computer a lot. I conducted four zoom interviews—three with students, one with Dan Petrocelli, our school counselor—and then used free trials on transcription services otter.ai and temi to get written copies. 

Image: Me editing a transcript, ft. my little sister making pancakes. 

In these interviews, I didn’t get a consistent narrative about the effect the pandemic has had on each student’s life, which I anticipated to some degree. However, it did pose a challenge in developing the focus of my article. I met with Suzanne to discuss possible directions, and we created an outline (during which I learned some fancy new journalism vocabulary. Reporting “north star”= stated focus of your article. Nut graf= a paragraph explaining the context of your article). 

I began drafting the article late this week. The hook is about coming-of-age moments. For teens in 2020, our coming-of-age moment was a pandemic. I follow this with a more fact-based section about the effects of the pandemic. I’ll be citing the research I did last week as well as my interview with Dan. Finally, I’ll use my three other interviews to talk about the range of experiences teenagers have had. Next week, I’m going to finish this draft and send it off to Suzanne for edits. 

As far as meeting my goals goes, I think I’ve made some progress. I’ve learned about how an article's focus can shift during research, and how an editor and journalist work together to refine that focus. I’ve also learned more about the style of writing. For example, when writing my article, I’m supposed to avoid mentioning my own opinions, which is very different from writing an analytical essay or creative story.