Year: 2021

The last day at Greene was intense. We started off with a pep talk with Yaw Bonsu. As a college student, he is still going through the process of trying to make it into the journalism field. It was a really interesting perspective to hear and incredibly encouraging, being that I’m also a student. He gave a lot of good advice on things we can do in high school to get a head start. I now have a few ideas of projects to tackle in my senior year before college.

We were also able to speak with a college admissions dean at Stony Brook, Robert Pertusati. Overall he had a great personality that was entertaining and engaging. He was very helpful in giving us some information on the college application process. It seems slightly less stressful to me now.

Obviously it was our last day to finish up our story and video. The editing process was pretty intense and took up most of the day. Both the article and video were reviewed many times by my team as well as editors. We had to trim the video a little bit more as well as make some minor edits. For the article, we were struggling slightly to get it to flow well from idea to idea, but eventually found a way.

My experience this week has been incredible. I’m really glad I decided to apply for this program. I feel like I have a much better understanding of journalism and what really goes into it. I’ve been provided with a network here that will be helpful in my pursuit of a journalism career. I can’t stress enough how awesome my team was in putting our project together. We worked well together and just got along in general. I hope to keep in touch with them after the closing ceremony tomorrow.

Today was a good ending to my current Greene team membership. Throughout the day I struggled with trying to extend my team’s print piece but eventually gave in to the fact that the content I had was enough. Today was also beneficial because I learned about hosting a Zoom meeting to get a last-minute interview in, learned about this college from our guest speaker, refreshed my perception of the college admissions process from our second guest speaker, and finalized the places I desire to work in from our final guest speaker. So, overall camp was really great. I am getting a lot of experience and made some finalized answers about my choices when it comes to going into this field.

The second to last day of Greene week was a stressful but insightful one. For most of the day, I had a hard time knowing what my group needs to complete this project.

At first, I struggled with communicating and coordinating roles with both the instructors and the group members because I didn’t know how to tell them what happened with how the interview went. However, the guest lecture was interesting because it made me reflect on why I love journalism and how it can feel empowering to stand out in a newsroom because I may be the only one of my kind there who does this for a reason others might not share.

Eventually, as the day went on it got a little hectic because I struggled with the nerve to ask the Greene alum that I interviewed to do something that she was sensitive to. The biggest part of the day was when the instructors motivated me to reach out to interview someone to who I hesitated to reach out because I was worried that the request would be denied because many of my peers got requests shot down.

Nevertheless, and with some encouragement from the instructors, I reached out and was lucky to get it accepted. So overall this day was good because I was able to overcome my struggles of setting up interviews and learned some new article writing skills after sending the email to the person I hesitated to reach out to.

It has been a really strange but good first day of Greene Week. So during the first part, I had a good time listening to our guest speaker’s lecture about experiences working at a news station, which began to make me think that news stations can just be as interesting as a magazine outlet. Later in the day, I was forced to leave the second half to go to something. In the end, I felt that the first day of Greene week was okay because even though it missed something I got what I wanted to hear out of the day.

Today was mostly a day for me to sit down and make sure I got my work done.

I enjoyed hearing from all the speakers today. I particularly appreciated hearing from Sarah Kazadi and being able to see her work. I also liked hearing from Wasim Ahmad because I actually have an Instagram where I post my photography, so I liked hearing all the tips he had in terms of keeping up social media accounts.

After I completed my work (the first drafts at least), I took a break and walked around my neighborhood. I also listened to a podcast about one of my favorite movies (“Dead Poets Society”) on my walk before I went back to my house and met with my team members to discuss our progress.

Sunday afternoon feels so long ago right now…

I’m writing this from my desk feeling more tired than I did during any other point this week. My team and I have been working so hard on our packages and I’m so proud of all of us. The article that I wrote about the 2022 Democratic Primary for NY-01 is probably one of the best articles I’ve written in my short time writing articles. I conducted two interviews and went through three rounds of editing, so this is also the most work I’ve put into an article.

I’ve gotten so much out of this program this week. I’d say I’ve definitely improved my interviewing skills and have a better understanding of basic broadcast techniques that I’ll be sure to use for any videos I make soon. The professors have been great this week, and my team leader Chrissy Sampson has been very helpful and supportive in making sure my team gets things done. It’s been a great, long week that I’ll always remember.

Happy Friday, Jr. Greene Team!

Today was BUSY!

We are officially in crunch time with our projects. Meeting with final interviews, revising stories, reading scripts and editing video… it was a busy day.

Something that I thought was extremely insightful today was one of our guest speakers, Wasim Ahmad. He talked to us about how to shoot video and photos for social media, and more importantly how to get your profile seen on social media.

Social media is becoming more and more a professional tool and it is critical that us young journalists learn how to navigate it properly. I never thought in my entire life I would hear a professor tell me that it is good to be on social media, but hey, I’m not complaining.

I am in charge of social media and online presence for my school’s softball team (@luhi_softball) and I can confidently say that this pep talk by Ahmad will help me grow that platform tenfold. I truly truly appreciate the time he gave us today because I think I learned an extremely valuable lesson.

Today was super, super informative but really, really fun. It was the perfect combo! It almost had the same feeling of eating something healthy but also really enjoying it. 🙂

See ya tomorrow, Greene Team!

Thursday was one of my favorite days of the week!

Chrissy Sampson came and gave us a lecture about the ways of F.O.I.L. (Freedom Of Information Law). F.O.I.L. allows journalists to be able to see files that were hidden away from the public.

Sampson explained to us that most of these files are supposed to be available to journalists because we are the people that provide it to the public. Granted there are some files that companies are allowed to keep private but there are files that deserve to be shared.

“You have to find information that is not readily available,” Sampson said. Nothing is going to be waiting at our fingertips, we have to be ready to dig for the information that we want and need.

As Sampson closed her lecture, Mr. Ricioppo came and gave us a run down of how we should make scripts and edit our videos.

“If you say it, show it,” Ricioppo said. Everything that is said in the script has to be shown in the video for it to flow.

After Mr. Ricioppo wrapped up his lecture, we had two guest speakers, Wasim Ahmad and Sarah M. Kazadi.

Ahmad came and made us realize that our presence on social media is always supposed to be professional, natural and interesting. We get promotions based on how we portray ourselves. The more we are on social media the better for our credit.

Kazadi then came and allowed us to understand that as journalists we have to have thick skin.

“You seek your own opportunities,” Kazadi said. Opportunities do not fall into your lap, we have to take advantage of everything that we can do and can get. The more we show interest the more we are able to get exposure.

We were then given the rest of the day to just work with our groups and finish up our assignment before it is due on Friday.

We worked ’round the clock and spent hours after the camp was finished just completing all that we could.

It was stressful but a lot of fun!

See you tomorrow for my last Greene Team blog!

I’m a weather girl!

Today we went on air and experienced the a day in the life of a TV news anchor… and it was hard. News anchors have little earpieces in their ears which connects them to the control room. The control room is constantly talking to the anchors about when they need to cue a new segment, cue a jump to an interview clip, etc. The anchors have to listen to all of that, read the teleprompter, and still look like they are not confused! It is incredible what they can do.

I appreciated this opportunity immensely and especially appreciated the chance to meet with Ms. McGinnis, who explained the field of broadcast in a way that made us all interested.

Tomorrow is crackdown time for our projects… so buckle your seatbelts. It’s almost here!