Category: Coursework

Schooldays/String

I chose to go way back with my school post, found here. This is an article about my high school, Starr’s Mill, getting ready to open in 1997. It’s a sweet piece for me, as I grew up going to school in the complex mention and gives me a little bit of history about where I spent 12 years of my life. I did not know there was a Starr’s Mill school in Fayette county long before ours opened, I thought the name of the school was based solely off the mill that was a mile down the road.

 

In regards to Clark’s writing, I probably need a better way of keeping track of my material for stories. Although I know we briefly discussed in class, there are some really great resources out there. My best method is a little bit of organized chaos, but it works for me. I have grown very fond of Google Drive, so I make a folder in Google Drive for each piece that I work on. I have a doc for story links, a doc for transcriptions, one for background facts and one for the actual story. I intend to use the same method for this class but hope I can weave in some new techniques as we learn them.

Through the Archives: Pickens High teacher accused of sexually assaulting student

I struggled to find stories about Pickens High School in the time frame suggested, so I went with this story from 2010 about a PHS science teacher who was accused of sexual assault.

It was a surreal time when I was in ninth grade and this happened. Laura Lyles taught several of my friends, so there were a lot of questions about if anything had occurred with them. One person who was rumored to be involved was my mother’s best friend’s son, so that was an interesting situation to see play out from afar.

It was a situation that certainly made it hard for everyone to keep their attention at the work in front of them. Some made crude jokes, some were scared of being accused and others didn’t pay it any mind. What’s strange now is that I had completely forgotten about it until this assignment. In fact, it took several minutes for me to remember the teacher’s name.

Saving My Strings

I have started to stick with a general strategy when it comes to keeping track of story materials.

When the story idea first pops into my head, I’ll pull up the “Notes” app on my iPhone and jot down just a brief description of the idea. I’ve learned to write the description instead of just two or three words from experience because I have ideas still on my list whose meaning I am still unaware of.

Then I make two separate Google Doc folders. One is the document that has the transcript of any interviews as well as links to relevant stories or videos about the story topic. If there are key pieces that I need to seek out for the first document, I’ll leave a sticky note on my laptop background with keywords to look for in case I forget. I’ll normally transcribe entire interviews even if I think certain parts are irrelevant, because more than once I’ve used something I initially thought was a mere throw-away quote.

From there, I just transfer the necessary information from the first document into the second document as I write. Writing in your classes has converted me to using Google Docs, and at this point I swear by it.

Organizing and keeping track of material

 

Every since class last week, I have downloaded the Pocket extension for Google Chrome and have already found that very useful. I plan to use that a lot to save stories that I find on the internet that I can use for research and help with the background of my story. If I’m just using an article or a google search to find a quick fact or piece of background information I’ll type it down in Word on the notepad formatted page. This type of format is where I take all my notes for class, I just find it’s super easy to use. All of the background information I need for the story I’ll have on one Word document. What I love about the notepad is that I can have different tabs on the document and different aspects of whatever I’m taking notes on will have its own tab.

I will create a folder for each piece I’m working on and within that specific folder there will be lots of documents and pictures and what not. It’s not the most organized but I will use very specific titles on the documents and can tell just through preview if they are a normal formatted Word doc or a notepad formatted one.

This summer at my internship whenever I’d get an email from my editor I’d read what he want me to write and copy and paste that into a Word document so I didn’t have to search through my email to find it and I could just refer to the document for specifics. I do like how Clark immediately writes down his goals for a story and how he wants to format the story. I also love the whole section of the chapter about procrastination because I find that to be very real.

Personally “saving string” in a plastic box overwhelms me, while I think it’s a good idea, I don’t know if it’s right for me. I don’t like clutter and having multiple boxes of information for stories that still need to be written, gives me a little bit of anxiety. I will definitely try it though because I’m not the professional writer and Clark is. He made a lot of useful tips throughout this section that I plan to incorporate into my organizing my material for stories.

Sayre School

I looked long and hard for a news story that’s about my small private school in downtown Lexington, KY and it took me a while to find a story I wanted to post. Most of the things I found while searching we’re just score updates or school reviews. My school for as long as I can remember was pretty drama free in the sense of newsworthy-ness. I did find this story (although it’s from 2010, it’s the only thing I could find that fit into the description of a new story about my school).

I think this story is very interesting because I was a sophomore when this story happened and it was a pretty huge deal among our little community. Dylan Newton, a senior at the time, was our soccer teams best player. He was a really special player to watch and was almost like a magician on the field. During a game he fell and broke his leg really badly. He had to be taken off the field by an ambulance and couldn’t finish the rest of his senior year. It was a huge deal to our small school because with him on our team we were going to have a chance to go further in the state championship than we had done in previous years. This is a big deal for a small academic school that, at the time, didn’t even have athletic tryouts for most teams because we needed all the players we could get.

I remember visiting Dylan in the hospital and his leg injury was much more serious than just a break. He had a horrible infection in his leg and the doctors found a way to treat it: maggots. That’s what this story is about. Dylan still has his leg and it is functioning just as well today even though he did not get to go on and further his soccer career in college.

Research and planning throughout my reporting

I’m obsessively organized in most areas of my life, and I do the same with reporting and writing. I like the comfortableness of having a routine and that’s how I typically produce my best work. Even though the process is sometimes elongated (for a story I report for a month or longer) or condensed (when doing 15 minutes of research prior to football availability), the steps stay consistent.

I have a reminders list on my computer that is called “Stories to write.” It’s essentially anything I’m curious about and think could turn into a story. This reminds me of how Clark said he had bins with big-picture themes. I leisurely explore those topics, simply because I’m interested, and slowly I’ll make additions to the bullet point, such as a possible source to talk to, a stat I need to I look up and sometimes even an entire lede.

I read a lot. I do a ton of background research, particularly if it’s a story that’s fairly large. It gives me a feel for the angles that haven’t been explored and it helps me create better questions. This is the step I never skip, even if it’s just rapid research at a football availability. I don’t write unless I’ve read something on that topic. In terms of reading to become a better writer, I try to do that whenever I have the time. There are a few stories that I’ll read every month or so simply because I think they are so well-written that there’s no way I can’t continually learn something from it.

For a few of my biggest stories I’ve done, I print my transcriptions. I read them, highlight and make notes. I constantly ask myself, “What is the story? Who are the characters? Why do they act they way they do? Is there a conflict?” That’s helped me more than anything, just asking myself, “What is the story here?” I outline because in the long run it saves time. I outline when I’m on deadline, and I outline when I have all the time in the world. I don’t do sophisticated Roman numerals or anything of that nature, but I think of all the main points I need to hit and write them down. That way, it’s easier to make structural changes. When I write, it’s quick because of the work I’ve done on the back end.

Easley High School archived story

Finding archived stories about my high school in Easley, South Carolina, was a bit difficult. There’s plenty of news from recent years, but once I searched for news from 2009 or prior, the selection was scarce. I did find this story about an Easley High School teacher who was charged with four counts of soliciting minors. Yes, it’s a very gloomy story. But it interested me because I had no clue. I was about to enter middle school at the time this story was written, so it seems reasonable to think that I would have heard about this, but I don’t remember anything. I like looking back and thinking about how I consumed news at different ages. I feel like around this time, I definitely wasn’t consuming online news regularly. However, my mom also said she doesn’t remember this, so it might have been extremely under-covered.

The story was published on GoUpstate.com in July of 2007. It reported that Curtis Ballard, who was a science teacher at Easley High School, was charged with soliciting sex through the Internet. He was caught by deputies posing as 13-year-old girls. He had been teaching at the school for over 20 years and taught biology, anatomy and physiology. I also noticed the lack of coverage on this incident from other local news publications, which surprised me.

Writing Tools: Keeping Track

When I am working on a big story or one that contains a lot of gathered materials, what I try to do is keep all the parts in one folder. Whether it’s interview transcripts, secondary research, field notes, etc. I think creating a desktop folder specifically for that story is the best way to go about it. However, technology has it’s tweaks, so saving all the work to a jump drive, is also very important as well.

I prefer keeping everything in a digital form is better that have physical copies because it’s easier to find and keep up with. Using a computer is also very convenient because you can access your information from different sites. If I send the folder to my email then I can have that information at any computer I have access too. I can also create neat little checklists, reminders and calendars to make sure I am making deadlines and not forgetting to do anything.

Since we have a class project that everyone will be working on, I plan to make a “High School Transfers” folder on my desktop and keep all my material for that project in there. And I plan to so the same for my individual projects.

I started off with a folder just labeled “School,” my freshman year in college. I was too fond of using a laptop for pretty much all my work, so I figured that one folder would suffice. It did not take long though for me to realize that I would not only need to categorize my classes into different folders but also make individual folders inside of those to categorize work for my different projects and assignements. In my opinion it’s the easiest way to go about it and you can file almost any type of document.

High School Archives: Southwest DeKalb

About 99% of the archives I found about my high school Southwest DeKalb were about sports, mainly football. SWD has always been a worthy competitor in Georgia high school sports, so I was not surprised. The most interesting story I found was written by Shannon Owens of the Orlando Sentinel. The article titled “Black kicker a rare find,” was about written about Taylor Wesley, who at the time was Florida A&M’s starting kicker. Wesley is also an alumnus of Southwest DeKalb High School. He talks about growing up in an all black community and how there were black kickers in grade because someone had to take the position. He went on to mention the number of black kickers dwindle significantly once they move on to college, even at HBCUs.

The writer also interviewed SWD’s head football coach at the time, Colin Godfrey. Coach “Buck,” as we called him, was the first black kicker to emerge out of Southwest DeKalb and receive a full athletic scholarship for his position. Coach Buck thinks that many black students don’t go after the kicker position because people are more concerned with those who make touchdowns and throw passes.