Synopsis
During this semester, I have learned different aspects that directly pertain to digital journalism. I learned how to create an infographic based on the data organizing skills we learned in class. I also learned how to create a digital assignment by creating a news video for social media. Finally, I learned how to make a website using WordPress using HTML and CSS which will be vital in my career going forward.
Developing the Project
When writing the story project for this class, there were a couple of journalistic guidelines and ethics that I used. First and foremost, I adhered to the “seek truth and report it” principle. The truth of living in San Diego is that it is extremely expensive to live in the county, especially when you are a student and you are working. To me, this truth is important to report on because I don’t see a lot of stories that cover these types of topics. I usually see very reactionary headlines that talk about flashy things. Because of this, I feel like the very real danger that everyday people face due to the rise of poverty and poverty conditions gets swept under the rug.
While I greatly enjoyed the story project for this class, I encountered several difficulties during the process. One difficulty that I had was getting people to agree to interviews. It was easier to interview my peers through connections with classmates and friends that I didn’t know that well. I would ask them if they knew anyone who was dealing with affordability problems and were willing to be interviewed about it. It was more difficult to get people from school programs and the faculty to agree to an interview. SDSU has an arduous process for clearing people for an interview, which meant that I had to be persistent in my emails and phone calls for an interview.
Some opportunities that I had while writing this story project were the opportunity to tell a story that was very important to me. I was able to do that in a way that is consistent with today’s digital content atmosphere. This story gave me the opportunity to practice my “big ticket” interviews, which is an important skill to refine. Not only did I practice actual interviewing, but I also practiced the process of securing an interview like that. The process included emailing many different sources to see if they were available, creating the questions in advance and setting the meeting itself.
Digital Media Experience
This assignment has helped me gain a better understanding of digital journalism. It taught me how to navigate the digital news landscape by using meta tags, which will help me reach a broader audience from search results. It also taught me how important it is to have multiple different aspects in a digital story, including photos, social media posts, infographics and data points to make the story more engaging.
I really enjoyed using data, databases and Google Sheets for my assignment. One of my favorite styles of journalism is data journalism, because it is hard to argue with data. Databases can reveal a pattern that a journalist might know anecdotally, and give it much more credibility in the numbers. While I enjoyed getting practice in this field, I realized how time-consuming and tedious the data gathering and math checking were.
I found working with WordPress very difficult and frustrating at times. Website building skills are invaluable in today’s digital age. However, I felt like there were a lot of aspects of this program that were confusing or just didn’t work. For example, embedding the Instagram post and the infographic was very difficult because the “embed” feature on WordPress didn’t work. This meant that I had to do a lot of troubleshooting and editing that we didn’t learn about in class.
One of the most enjoyable moments of working on my story was interviewing students about the subject I had chosen. I enjoy connecting to the masses, hearing what is affecting them the most and what they think it will take to change these issues. It also helped to solidify the trend that I had been observing for quite some time, which was exciting to see. I always enjoy it when a story comes together, especially because that means I was on the mark–I didn’t have to start from scratch. Another moment that I enjoyed was the data gathering for the infographic. I enjoyed this part because I love working with data, as it is tangible and hard to argue with. I also enjoyed this part because my journalistic style will be rooted in data journalism, so it was good practice to gather data this way.