REPORTING & WRITING
Even if most of my responsibilities are geared towards maintaining and running The Muse website, I still try to engage myself in reporting to be another person who can provide a voice for the Dreyfoos community. Balancing editor duties and writing had some difficulties but each were a major learning experience that taught me how to report on the things I observe and inform a student body about relevant information and trends. It's also taught me how to write with a strong, engaging voice.
We Are All School Safety
My co-writer and I wanted to write a news story informing students about our school's safety and what goes into maintaining it. There were many different approaches to this kind of issue, and it resulted in changes to the story from critiques and further research we gathered while writing and developing the piece. At first, we intended to investigate the assessments and inspections of building safety, but with numerous interviews, we changed to writing a piece that revealed the
Photo by Natalie Ryder
different opinions in the community regarding our school's safety and how well we upheld it. It was important we knew what went into safety, especially in regards to legislation and events in this past decade that revealed its importance. We also wanted to gather a variety of different opinions that could truly represent what students and staff thought about safety, and so, we conducted many different interviews and a survey.
The story was published in the second issue of the 19th volume of The Muse.
News Briefs
"Breaking Muse" is the name of our news briefs implemented during the 2021-2022 school year. The Website's staffers wrote brief stories on events that other staffers were not covering. We focused on getting the facts out in a quick, concise manner to inform about or recap school events such as performances and sports games. For the most part, news briefs were published twice weekly and one news brief was published a day during Spirit Week. The Spirit Week briefs acted as quick announcements and recaps regarding dress-up day themes, games, events, and points. From writing news briefs, I improved and learned to adapt to writing under shorter and faster-approaching deadlines while also reporting more concise and timely news.
Graphic by Alana Cavanagh
It's Not Perfect, But That's the Point
Encanto was highly talked about for being a relatable story for many students of Colombian descent or with families similar to the Madrigals. Thus, I wanted to focus on what the audience would want to get out of the review, especially those that hadn't watch it yet and wanted to know if it was as good as many others may say. For this, I researched it and the reception, especially the focus on Colombian representation and intergenerational trauma. When it came to finally watching the movie, I carried with me my reporter's notebook and extensively took note of every aspect (e.g., animation, music).
Graphic by Alana Cavanagh
I had a lot to say, and I knew it needed to be organized, so I went even further to repeat my thoughts and verbally explain them in a rant-like video 20 minutes in length. The result of all these notes was a review providing positive but critical feedback, and I made sure I let my voice shine through to make it an interesting piece to read.
Don't Settle: This is Not Enough
At the time, there was major discussion about our district-mandated mental health education. I was unsatisfied with it, so I wrote an opinion story demanding for better mental health education. I focused on criticizing the current program our school and district used, and I shared my perspective on mental health education and de-stigmatization while also proposing general solutions or changes. In the process, I also researched mental health education and what "starting the conversation" really looked like. Although I needed to do extensive, lengthy research and go through numerous edits to strengthen and refine my point, I ended up with a piece strongly sharing a substantiated argument that our district could not settle on the kind of mental health standards it set and considered acceptable.
There's Nothing Wrong with Red Pandas
Graphic by Capri Wayne
This was another highly talked about movie at the time for how the story portrayed growing up. There was a lot of criticism about the portrayal and overall execution of the film, and in response, a lot of confusion about the controversy. I decided to write a review for it because of how the movie heavily resonated with my personal experiences growing up as a female at birth (AFAB) Asian teenager. I went into how the very criticisms of the film were actually what made it great, and I made sure to write it with a strong, personal voice because of how relatable the story was to me.