I’m writing this article on Friday morning, July 15th, 2016. It’s my last day of the two-week Summer Intensive Workshop for Writing and Reporting at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and even though I am beyond the realm of exhausted, every second spent at the workshop was worth it.
The program started on July 5th, at 9:00am. Considering it's summer, the last thing I wanted to do was get up at the asscrack of dawn to be on a bus by seven in the morning. After the initial orientation, the 70 or so students from all around the world who signed up for the program were split up by the workshop we chose before the program even started. The Writing and Reporting workshop was only one of three; Digital Journalism Skills Intensive and Entrepreneurial Journalism were the other two programs that could have been chosen.
My Professors were Lisa Armstrong and Daryl Khan, two extremely experienced journalists who had so much to teach other young writers like myself. After having everyone introduce themselves, they dove straight into the fundamentals of a news story. Things like proximity, novelty, timeliness and conflict were brought up, and these are the most important pieces of the puzzle that could be classified as a great story. After being in the classroom for most of the morning and some of the afternoon, we were told to interview people on the street about topics our Professors gave us, and I nearly had a heart attack. I had never done anything like this before, and I was scared out of my mind, but there was no way I was able to back out of it. Thankfully, after it was over, I found that I didn't hate it as much as I thought.
The rest of that first week went similar to our first day. We would discuss news strategies and current events from the morning until the early afternoon, and later on, we were able to explore Manhattan and completed reporting and writing drills along the way. We also needed to head to either Long Island City, Astoria, or Jackson Heights to find a topic for the story that was due the following Thursday, so we were able to explore Queens as well.
By the time the second week rolled around, lots of us were getting last minute information for our chosen story ideas; we were tying up loose ends, so to speak. The constant traveling, the endless walking, and the mad dash for information and quotes from locals around LIC was super stressful, but after a few trips I finally believed that I’d had enough information to create a great story. It also helped that guest speakers shared their knowledge of the journalism world with us over the two weeks as well. Every speaker had a different journalistic background. For example, one speaker focused on smartphone reporting, another focused on extensive research and fact-checking, and another focused on photojournalism.
I can honestly say that this experience was nothing like I had imagined. There was so much hands-on learning involved, and I gained real-world knowledge of the journalism process. I knew before signing up for this program that a journalist’s job wasn't easy, but now I can empathize with other journalists because I got a small taste of the kinds of situations they deal with regularly. As nerve-wracking as being a journalist can be, now I know for sure that this is the kind of career I want to pursue. Journalists are passionate and determined, but above all they are curious. I would definitely recommend this program to anyone interested in telling stories and getting the truth out there; I promise you won't regret it.
P.S. - Here's a link to the article I sent to my editors if you want to give it a read!
