Synopsis:
I feel like I learned a lot this semester in class. I feel like I learned how to take certain angles on my story and use statistics and facts to back up certain opinions I had that were presented within my story. I feel like without the things I learned this semester maybe I would've taken another angle that maybe wouldn't have came off as clean or as important. I feel like when covering something in sports it's easy to get off track and go down a wormhole, especially based on opinion, but I kept it very factual and I had good sources and I'm fortunate to have that. We also learned how to create our own website and edit it, which I feel like is a very important ability to have going into the real world and no matter what profession you go into I feel like those skills can easily be applied
Developing the story:
- I feel like I followed a lot of the ethical guidelines when working on this story. Accuracy, fairness in balance, and verification was pretty easy because these are all sports facts so anyone can google it and check the statistics that I was presenting so you could clearly see the points that I was making. I feel like it very hard for someone to argue against numbers.
- I faced a couple of challenges in this story. Sometimes I felt a bit repetitive because I felt like the gist of my story was pretty obvious but I feel like the story was so complex at the same time and had so many angles, and for people who don't know anything about tennis or maybe didn't grow up playing sports in general and understand the dedication, hard work and perseverance that goes into being on top of a sport for 20 years. A lot of people probably can't fathom what that is like because that takes an insane amount of mental fortitude that many people don't have, it was also hard trying to come up with questions to ask my sources that weren't all to generic and too similar.
- I got an opportunity to speak to someone new and at the same time reconnect with one of my old coaches and friend as I am amid graduation from college where they have seen me from a much younger age. I also liked how I was able to express my knowledge for the history and current statistics of tennis. A lot of the time in class when we have stories it's about things I honestly don't care about so it was refreshing to choose my own topic and something I could talk on for hours like Star Wars, or the best Drake album. It gave me more passion and interest into my story than I would've had otherwise because I am also an athlete and competitor so I felt like I was able to put the story into perspective to someone who may not understand it.
Digital Media Experience:
- This experience definitely helped my understanding of digital journalism since this is indeed a digital journalism class. But like I said earlier I got a broader understanding of how to create a story and use certain tools to help, such as creating a website. Also a lot of the activities we did were interesting and sometimes not the easiest but it was fun to do.
- My experiences using data, databases and Google Sheets for digital journalism was interesting and I've always been good with data so this part was fun for me because now that I have these abilities I know I can apply that to so many things. And one thing I always say is you cant argue with numbers so being able to articulate the numbers into data was helpful especially for a story like mine.
- My experience in creating the website was a bit difficult at times, understanding how to work it sometimes was confusing. Editing it was a bit weird at times but the fact that I created my own website was cool, and now that I learned how to do it, I could totally seeing myself doing something like this in the future.
- Some of the most enjoyable moments in this class was honestly presenting, I felt like sports plays a big impact in shaping peoples lives and it played a huge role in mine. I said in my presentation that in a way tennis is a way a game of life. When things don't go your way you have to learn to adapt and change your gameplan to be able to win. If you play a bad point or you have a bad day, brush it off, next point next day. And to express my knowledge of the sport was cool for me. I enjoyed doing all of the math because I'm very good with math so I felt less stupid during those classes which was nice. Overall it was a good vibe in the class and the best part I think is that it was just like the small council chamber in Game of Thrones and I sat on the middle seat on the opposing side just like Tyrion Lannister.