Mentors: Bill Maine Executive Vice President and General Manager, Jacobs Media
Everyone has the ability to write a story. I used to hate writing just about anything because of the time that it took and I wasn’t a very good writer. It wasn’t until I wrote a short story about a Vietnam Veteran for my AP English class that I really enjoyed writing. This was also one of the best pieces of writing I have ever written. This was the first time I had wrote a creative writing piece and I surprised myself with my vocabulary, diction, and story writing. From that moment, I learned that I could turn my writing into a career. This is my second year being at the WDUN Radio Station and this year I looked at my mentorship with the idea in mind of becoming a journalist. As soon as I had this perspective, I asked myself, what does it take to be a great journalist and how can I apply these skills to myself? In order to find the answer to this question, I conducted an interview with one of my co-workers, Alyson Shields, who is a journalist, and I also did some research through Galileo. One of the most common answers I found in my research was to be sure to know the audience that you will be writing to. More specifically Alyson said that my stories need to have the “personal and emotional appeal”. Her audience is the local community of Gainesville so she has to figure out what will get people invested in her stories. If I did go into this field of work, I will need to figure out what kind of community I will be working for in order to appeal to my audience in the best way possible.
Project Website: https://1019668.wixsite.com/honorsmentorship-1