Advocate updates

For this week’s paper, I wrote a story about the Safe Zone Training sessions at MSUM. Safe Zone is a program focused on forming allies for the LGBTQ  community on campus. The overall goal is to create a welcoming community on campus for all students regardless of their sexual orientation and background. I interviewed three of the trainers for the interview and was impressed with their passion on the subject. We ended up writing our editorial on the subject and asked the students, faculty and staff at MSUM to help make campus a welcoming community for all by keeping the lines of communication open.

I also recently had the opportunity to cover former President Bill Clinton‘s visit to Fargo. Due to Hurricane Sandy on the east coast, Clinton’s scheduled opened up, allowing him to make a few stops in North Dakota and Minnesota. He came to Fargo to help rally support for N.D. Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp, who ended up winning the election. It was the first political rally I had ever been to, and it was cool to see all the excitement and energy in the arena.

Lane Zyvoloski, another mass comm student at MSUM, was also at the event and took some amazing photos we published in the paper and online. Check out her photo gallery here.

The same week I also covered a less exciting topic: special education certification. Although it wasn’t the most exciting story, it’s always nice to do one of these more informative, academic articles. It’s nice to see how things are changing to better prepare students for real world.

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Along with writing, I have also been working on a few changes/additions to the Advocate. Readers can now view the PDF version of the paper right on our website. And the PDF includes one to two additional ONLINE EXCLUSIVE pages with additional stories and photographs. Check it out at MSUMadvocate.com

Our online editor Megan Havig and I are working on even more changes/additions to the website, so look forward to more photos and videos!

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Jasmine

 

Writing for the Web 2

In the last couple weeks, I’ve posted two more stories on Doing it downtown for my Writing for the Web class. The first was a story about a local musician who plays on a street corner in downtown Fargo. I heard him playing during a street fair this summer. In between songs, he talked about how he always plays on the same corner because it’s located between two of the most popular downtown bars. He said he enjoys seeing the interactions between the drunks from each bar. I didn’t know his name or how popular he was at the time, but I decided to pitch the story idea at the beginning of the semester. After the idea was “approved,” I went to Spicy Pie and asked if they knew the guy that played outside their building. They said his name was Eden Parker, so I looked up “Eden Parker” and sure enough it was the same guy. I contacted him via Facebook and set up an interview. My boyfriend Robert came along to video tape the interview and ended up shooting a “music video” as well.

F-M artist shares stories with late-night downtowners

Eden was very down to earth and I was happy I got the chance to meet such a great local musician and help tell his story. I incorporated links, music, photos and video to make the story a complete multimedia package, and I think it turned out great.

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The second story was the first opinion/first person piece I’ve written for class. It was also the first story I’ve ever written about running, which was kind of cool because it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I remember when I first became interested in journalism I either wanted to write about fashion or running. Now, I’ve done both for the class blog.

The marathon effect: Fans get inspired to run

The story is about fans getting inspired and motivated from watching the Fargo Marathon and other races. I interviewed Mark Knutson, director of the Fargo Marathon, who said he’s seen many people watch the race one year and then run their first 10k or half marathon the next. I think it’s really cool that just watching runners can inspire others. I’ve experienced it myself and know others have too, so it was cool to share the “phenomenon” with our readers.

Writing for the Web

My favorite class this semester has been Writing for the Web. I absolutely love the class because, well, it’s with my favorite professor Deneen Gilmour and it’s all about blogs, which I absolutely love. Deneen is always so excited about “new” media and online resources that it gets me excited about it too.

I’ve published two of my stories so far, one on Makin’ It Better and one on Doing It Downtown. Both were my own original ideas and I had a blast working on them.

The first story was about Ms. Simplicity, a professional organizer. I originally planned on writing the story mostly about her blog and how she shares organizing tips and tricks with her readers, but the idea changed after interviewing her. The story turned into more of a profile of her career and how she does what she does, but I think it still turned out great. And it was a lot of fun meeting Melissa and seeing her beautiful (and organized) home. It was also great to hear some of her organizing tips and tricks.

Ms. Simplicity organizes homes, lives

The second story was my favorite so far. It was all about shoes and what they say about the owner’s personality. I went downtown and interviewed F-M downtowners about their shoes. Then, I went to Journey’s in West Acres Mall and interviewed the “experts.” It was a lot of fun and interesting to see what people had to say about their personalities and shoes.

Shoes Talk: FM downtowners reveal personality traits through their shoes

Everyone has come up with such interesting story ideas this semester, so go check them out at Doing It Downtown and Makin It Better. Be sure to leave a comment or two to let us know what you think.

Digital Story Telling – “My Escape”

After a fun summer interning at West Central Tribune, I jumped head first into my last fall semester of college. As editor of The Advocate, president of MSUM SPJ and still a sales-associate at DSW, it’s been hard to keep track of everything else, like my classes. But, I’ve been doing a lot of fun projects and stories including a narrated slideshow that I created for my Digital Story Telling class. I decided to write a story about my favorite place in the world – our family A-Frame on Lake Superior.

I wrote the story, recorded the narration and then used my family’s pictures to create the narrated slideshow.

It was my first time making a narrated slideshow, but I think it turned out pretty neat. Our next assignment is to interview and photograph somebody, then edit the audio and photos to tell a story. It’s a bit more difficult, but it’ll be fun.

To see what else I’ve been up to check out Cute ‘N’ Comfy and The Advocate.