critical preface

Feature Story

I was excited to write my feature story on a band. I struggled with earlier drafts of the feature, but eventually I hit a stride with my writing and was proud of my completed piece. I did run into trouble with the paramedic method; I understand its importance, but while making my final edits I found it difficult to rephrase certain parts of the piece using the method, as it changed the tone of what I was trying to say. For future writing, I will keep the paramedic method in mind, and focus more on saying what I want to say with fewer prepositions in primary drafts.

Group Editorial

I offered to do the majority of the writing for my group editorial. Previous experience with my group gave me reason to believe if I didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done at all. The topic- standardized testing in America and how it is negatively affecting the way students learn and teachers educate- was one I found interesting, and I was able to find plenty of good sources. However, I don’t consider it my best writing, and received no input from the rest of my group.

Brochure

Again, for the brochure, I found myself doing most of the work. Duffy and I met to create a plan for our market audience- high school athletes- and went to Schwartz center to take pictures. Throughout the process I have unintentionally and reluctantly been the one responsible for putting the brochure together. Duffy sent me the images we used in the brochure, but I wrote the text and created the layout. I emailed my group throughout the process with updates and stated that they were welcome to make any changes, but received no responses from them with their own edits. When I asked for contributions or feedback, they were given to me to then add to the brochure myself.

News Releases

I was confident writing the news releases, after doing the previous exercise on press releases earlier in the semester. That made the assignment easier to understand. I wrote them in real time (one event that had already happened at the time of writing, two that had yet to occur).

Broadcast Script

I was responsible for assembling the script and formatting it. Each group member wrote their own portion of the script. We planned to meet once before recording day, however there were communication problems and my group members were unable to show up at the agreed time. Despite this, I felt good about our script, and thought our recording went fairly well.

Print Ad

I enjoyed creating a layout for the print ad. I liked the design I came up with, but felt that a better picture could have been used to complete the vision I had. With more time and effort it could have been developed better. I paid attention to color, use of space, and text, and hopefully it comes across as a cohesive idea.

Overall, the assignments from this course gave me a lot to think about for future writing. Working in groups required me to face the dilemma of looking out only for myself, or to work with whatever my group members contributed and not let the entire group sink. If we were a writing team at a news organization and had to meet a deadline, it wouldn’t matter who contributed what, we would all be held accountable for getting our work in on time, which is why I decided to do what I could and make sure all of the assignments were completed.