What you need to know:
My first major assignment was an audio story on Just for Kids.
I ran into a few issues along the way, but everything ended up working out just fine.
I learned a lot during this experience and now know more about digital journalism.
My first major assignment for my Digital Journalism course was to create an audio story. I chose to do a story on Just for Kids, a non-profit organization that specializes in before and after school programming for the youth of Western New York. The idea came to me fairly quickly, because I am currently doing an internship with the organization and therefore knew a bit about what I would want to cover.
At first, I wanted my story to be about the two new schools that the organization added to its programming, and would interview the principal of one of the schools as well as the executive director of the organization. However, the arrangement with the principal fell through, so I had to rework the idea for my story.
I settled on the idea to cover the organization as a whole, specifically focusing on the difference that the organization makes in the community. I decided I would interview the executive director as well as the director of before and after school programs. Unfortunately, the director of before and after school programs did not get back to me until after the deadline. Instead, I was able to visit one of the local schools and interview the program manager there.
This ended up working out in my favor, because I was able to get some good natural sounds of children playing, laughing and talking. I was also able to take a few photos of the kids while they were doing various activities at the program.
The interview with the executive director went very well; she gave me great answers and I got a lot of soundbites to work with. After I had gathered all the content I needed, I began the editing process. This was the easy part for me, because I’ve always loved editing, except I just had to figure out which sound bites I wanted to use. I went through the interviews over and over again until I settled on the perfect mix that really brought the story together.
When the finished product came out, I was happy with what I had put together. I’ve never done a project like this before, so I’m glad I was able to get this experience. Something I learned was to make sure to have backup plans in case something falls through, like how in my case I had a few people I wanted to interview back out or not respond. I also learned about a feature on iMovie, which is adding something as a cutaway. For this, I took the photo sequence I had put together and added it as a cutaway onto the audio, which made it so that the photo sequence played over the videos with audio in it. I never knew about this feature before, but I think it’s a really great tool!
Overall, I think this assignment went well. It was stressful at some points, trying to make sure I would have everything together for each deadline, but I am happy with the end result. I learned new things and now have a better understanding of what goes into making a great news story!
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