Bloggy!

Yeah...so...apparently only half of my blogs got published when they were supposed to. The others were not. This is why I back up all of my posts in Word. Ha! It's a clever boy. Also, this allowed me to do a bit of on-the-spot editing. Gnarly. Now, there's an interesting word...used in the 80s to mean cool or awesome, but also to be gnarled, as in branches of a tree. Hm.

So, it's snowing right now, I'm putting my portfolio together (which is what prompted me to even look at my blog in the first place), and it's...snowing. Wait, what? Snow? Here? In ElDo? Whoa. Crazy. Also, two of my friends - both a year younger than I am - just got engaged yesterday. Wow. Maybe I'll offer to write something about/for them. I just hope my girlfriend doesn't get any ideas. I need a job first...

Anyway, my other blog posts are up now...totally out of order. The homicide one goes before the crazy editor one, but after the profile piece. This is obviously the last, preceded by the feature article. Thangs, Blogger. Epic fail. Or, maybe it was just where I was posting from...a laundromat that had wifi. Not trusting that place again with important things...


This will probably be the last post on the blog for a while, so stay frosty, friends.

Can't stop the signal.

The Writing Process

So, my writing process is thus:

1. Research. Do a lot of it. It's what the internet is there for.

2. Do more research. See 1.

3. Do some interviews. Use research to determine questions.

4. Start writing.

5. Realize I don't have enough info. Do more interviews.

6. Write more.

7. Edit.

8. Submit.

Pretty simple, but it works. Also, I procrastinate, so all of these are sometimes in two or three days. Yeah. I'm awesome.

The Homicide

So, the homicide on campus. It's...freaky, to say the least.

Cross-posted to my DeviantArt account:

There was a murder on my campus, and I feel really sad about it, too. The guy who died sounded like he could have been a friend. I don't even know him, but, for really the first time, I care about someone who I never knew and died. And from the sounds of it, it was a case of going in his room at the wrong time. The police were already on their way...

Anyway, that's too depressing to really think about right now. Plus, I had to spend 5 hours in the newsroom researching how media portrays school shootings. I later made a general story out of all the other stories written by the news team.

Just for the blog:

Well, found out we won the Pacemaker Award, meaning that we were awesome in our coverage of the incident. We beat out the likes of Harvard and Princeton. As in, we had the best college newspaper thing in. the. nation.

Also, the general story I did turned into about 1/3 of the front page story. That's awesome.

Crazy Editors

Ok, so, I suppose I should post a few blogs for my class other than just the articles.

Anyway, I just wanted to comment on my crazy editor. I won't name her, so let's just call her "C" for "Crazy." I am aware of how highly original this is.

I digress. All I have to say is how crazy she is. She's made some...interesting...edits to my articles. Some of the things she wants me to ask for articles..."What is skydiving?" Really? Really, C? I know that newspapers usually treat their readers as if they know next to nothing, but skydiving? I'm fairly certain anyone who is of reading age knows what skydiving is. Then again, she didn't know what an airport hanger was. And, while I have had a diverse experience of both features and news writing, including an internship at a newspaper, she has only had experience in doing features articles for the newspaper. Her edits make no sense. I realize I seem to be complaining a lot, but I believe that I am justified in the fact that I rely on her to do my job. Also, some of the edits she has made, which affected the content of the story, were things that my EIC wanted included. Go figure.