final process piece

I found this class more difficult than I thought I would. I came in with a background in Creative Nonfiction, and absolutely no experience in any kind of journalism, and as I've realized throughout the quarter, there is a lot that I don't know about the differences between academic and journalistic writing. I still don't think that I know as much as I should, but I do know a lot more than I ever expected to. Hopefully what I have learned reflects in my final revisions. It's been interesting, balancing the way this class feels (more academic writing than creative writing) with the way that journalism actually works on the page.

I come to this class having had experience working on a podcast in the past. My role was largely in coordination, but I also ran the "mailbag" segment and recorded and guided several discussions. I found myself, throughout the quarter, making comparisons to what that work was like. Pursuing interviews was ultimately very similar; editing together the audio also was similar, and I think my experience editing segments for the podcast helped out with that. It also hindered me a little bit - that, and my psych background/interest in clinical psychology, and to a lesser extent, my exposure to Kenyan culture regarding conversation styles, has made me the kind of person who uses minimal positive encouragers when speaking to people (mhmms, yeahs, smiles, nods), and it was hard to turn that off when I was recording.

I have found the process of pursuing a story intimidating... and invigorating. At first, I was uncertain about interviewing contacts, and, more importantly, pursuing further contacts. I'm still uncertain about what to do when people reject interviews - which has happened once or twice with the Building Blocks piece - but overall I like to think that I have learned a little bit about the interviewing process in general, including what kind of questions to ask to get to the heart of the story. I've had a wide range of experiences interviewing, from interviewing completely strangers (KMRHS) to interviewing a man who I am very close to on a certain level (Kim Cummings). The approach to getting to a point of trust and to get to the story with both of these people was so different, and yet so similar - with the KMRHS men, I had to build from nothing; with Kim, I had to work around our existing relationship in order to get to the heart of things.

Coming up with my story ideas was very easy. I know what interests me and although I did not come into the class knowing what I wanted to write about, as I learned more about each assignment, the path I wanted to take became very clear. I don't really have any problems talking to people, and I like learning exhaustively about specific topics, so the research was also easy for me. Writing was a little harder; I had difficulty distilling what I wanted to say about each topic into one specific piece, and I often came up with two or three possibilities before deciding on one (like I did with my audio visual slideshow too!).

Because I was not as familiar with the journalism approach, I really appreciated the feedback from my peers as a guide to where to go and how to adjust my output to better fit journalistic styles, et cetera. However, also through this class, I became quite acquainted with what I like to see in a story :P so when the advice of my peers was in direct contradiction with my personal preference or with my gut feeling, I went with what I felt more strongly about.

Writing for this course helped me sharpen skills that I'm sure I'll use for the podcast in the future. I also learned that the kind of creativity needed to write journalism pieces comes more difficultly to me, so that, should I pursue more of it in the future, I will need to be sure to address that.

Finally, on a lighter note - this course, and the research I did for my pieces, gave me a much, much deeper appreciation for the research my uncle Glenn has to put into each of his Fact-Checker articles.