Day Nine of News Reporter Academy was the day students finally completed their news articles. With the help of professional editors, they put the final touches on their stories. However, camp wasn’t over yet! After finishing their stories, students heard from David Junger, whose social media campaign “#Twizzard” with the Mall of America won a Webby award in 2015. He taught students how to create their own social media campaigns, and they practiced by writing up mock campaigns for ThreeSixty. Who knows, maybe you’ll see one of their ideas come across your Facebook feed very soon!
At the end of the day, students got to celebrate their hard work with an ice cream social and parent reception in the Leather Room of the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library on the University of St. Thomas campus. It was a fantastic opportunity for parents to hear about what their students had been working so hard on for the past two weeks.
Here are the student reflections for July 18:
Datelle Straub – DeLaSalle High School
Today we worked with our editors and finished up our stories. I got to meet Mark, my editor, and he gave me some good tips and showed me a lot of stuff about writing. Lunch was very packed today and they didn’t have mac ‘n’ cheese, which made me upset.
Austin Kuo – Wayzata High School
Thank you Chad and Jamal Salaam for helping my news reporter project. Without you two, the paper would have been dull and uninteresting.
Dear ThreeSixty supporter,
ThreeSixty is a fun camp to bring anyone to. It teaches essential journalism skills. It’s a tough lesson to learn that requires time and commitment. If you’re up for the challenge, come to St. Thomas for ThreeSixty.
Thank you Theresa Malloy for directing the camp and making this stay fun. I would come again to another St. Thomas camp if it were run by you. Thank you.
Josie Morss – Lakeville North High School
Woah. In the past two weeks I’ve learned so much, so much more than I ever thought going into this camp. I was lucky enough to work with a professional editor in order to spice up my somewhat blah story. She really shared my vision of the story and made sure that it turned out exactly how I wanted it to. She was very relatable, easy to talk to, and helped me the most in making my story even better.
I spent tons of time, maybe too much time, thinking too hard about my article. Something major I did today that’s never happened before was basically scratch everything I did the day before and start all over again. I came in this morning with a sentence, two sentences at the most and somehow I felt zen about it. I really learned how to calm down, not worry so much, and let people read my stories critically so they can help me and make my article even better.
I also learned all about the importance of editing. I learned that a major part of journalism is edit, edit, edit. I’ve learned so much. I’ve met so many great people today, and within the last two weeks, and I will only learn more and more as my storytelling journey unfolds.
