2023 NSPA Multimedia Journalist of the Year Portfolio

When Rita Ionides asked me if I wanted to collaborate with her on a project involving pictures of leaves, I had no idea that I would be where I am now. We didn’t really have an idea of where we were going, just that we wanted to walk around CHS, take photos of the fall colors, and publish them. Tracy, our advisor, had introduced us to the world of KnightLab. That’s where we got the idea to take pictures of the same trees at different times. We could then show how the leaves changed over the month using KnightLab’s Juxtapose tool. We then took inspiration from a previous project by another student, which involved a map. KnightLab has a StoryMap tool, an interactive version. Not only would it show where each photo was taken, you could add the photo right into the slide! I managed to fit the juxtapose image file into each slide, and it looked great.

 

Near the end of the year, I sat in the passenger seat of my mom’s Subaru on the way home from a violin lesson. My phone began to vibrate. The call screen displayed the name of one of our editors. I picked it up. I was surprised to learn I had been offered the role of Multimedia Editor. It had not been an option on the application. They had created the position to award to me solely for Fall Foliage. The presentation won second place at MIPA.

 

I was excited for the job. I began experimenting over the summer to be ready for the new year. I wasn’t prepared for what the year would bring. I made a form staff could fill out for me to make or help make multimedia presentations. I made tutorials on how to use some of the tools, but still no one has shown much interest. That left me to make all of the interactive graphics for the site.

 

I struggled throughout the year to get my work published. Towards the end of the first semester, I began an opinion piece on whether or not finals should be placed before or after winter break. I sent out a poll via our publication’s Instagram and on our school’s Forum Bulletin, but this project ran concurrently with the cycle for our print publication. Our print editors were struggling to fill up the pages with themed articles on climate change, so we did a brainstorming exercise where we shared in groups what we thought the future would look like with climate change. I happened to have one of the pint Editor-in-Chiefs in my group, and she was inspired by how I talked about high speed intercity rail travel. She asked me to write an opinion on it, so I did. Since it was the end of the semester and the print edition needed to be sent off to the printer’s, I did not get time to work on the placement of finals opinion. It never got written.

 

Another case took place two months later in February for Valentine’s Day. Our school’s theater group, Community Ensemble Theater (CET), sells Singing Valentine’s every year. I was curious to see which song was the most popular, so I asked for the record of sales for this year. CET happily obliged, and I made a pie chart to display the popularity of each song. To make it a social media post, however, I needed quotes. The people involved with the Singing Valentine’s were too busy that week to talk in person, so I had to message them through Instagram, which took significantly longer. I still managed to write my post up within the week to meet the timeliness standards, but my post never got published. It sat there in Buffer for days. I contacted one of our social media editors, but it went unnoticed until it was no longer timely. 

It was difficult because it never felt like I had a real connection with anyone else on staff, so asking them to publish things multiple times was always a struggle. On our website, it still says “journalist” by my name instead of “multimedia editor” because I had already asked them to make multiple changes to my profile and I didn’t feel comfortable asking for another change. I usually didn’t sit with the others because the ideal computer for multimedia work is the Mac desktops in the back, not the small school chromebooks that everyone else used so they could sit on the couches towards the front. I hope next year I will be able to make a stronger connection with people, because my work as editor will be difficult without it. That is what I have learned this year.