by Stephanie Petrovick
In journalism, the senior editors are leaving for college. Alex Schley and Maris Laughton are going to American University, and Adam Colbert is going to Westfield State University. The interesting part of all this is the fact that this is the only time ever where the seniors are all majoring in journalism.
Alex Schley
Alex is a very enthusiastic journalist, and she always comes up with an interesting angle. For example, when she has the idea for something, she will not give up on it even if it is a failure or a success.
This year is her second time taking journalism, but when she first started journalism, she did not like writing and only wanted to write about sports. Once she was in the class, she changed her mind completely. Now she loves writing, does not want to write anything about sports, and is going to be a journalist once she leaves college.
She likes journalism because she is very opinionated, and when she writes it down, people actually pay attention to her views. As she puts it, it gives her a voice in the world that people will listen to. Last year, after reading her piece on concussions, one of the nurses sent her article to a person on the State Board of Health.
She also loves when the people she interviews show emotion during her interviews. Then, she knows that she has asked good questions. For any new journalists, Alex says, “If you want to do anything related to writing, take Mrs. Vessels’s class because it is really worth your while.”
Maris Laughton
Maris is the level headed and calm editor; she is willing to help out if she can. She has taken journalism for three years, in her freshman, sophomore, and now in her senior years. Like Alex, Maris is aiming to become a journalist because she has always been interested in the news, and she also likes to interview and talk with new people.
The biggest reason is that, for Maris, writing is her passion, and she wants to continue to do it and improve that skill for the rest of her life.
A part of journalism that she enjoys is the freedom to choose your own stories, and she says that without journalism she would not have written anything that she did in the class, and she also would not have learned any of the skills she now possesses. She knows her way around Photoshop and InDesign now. Maris also learned how to dig in deep when her interviewee is being vague, which happens frequently in journalism.
Some of her best work have been the pictures she takes because Maris enjoys the photography portion of journalism as well. She also likes going to the different conventions and conferences that are hosted for journalists during the year. In terms of advice for journalism students, Maris says, “Zoom with your feet!” Get closer instead of using the zoom on your camera; Maris lives by it.
Adam Colbert
Adam is the funny editor, who seems to have a new joke every class. This is his third year in journalism, but he started out in eighth grade with media. He liked it, so he went on to the next broadcast media class. But after that, Adam had no other broadcasting classes to take, so he decided that journalism was the next best thing. He is glad now that he took this class because he enjoys his time in journalism. He is looking at going into visual reporting as a career because it is more interactive, exciting, and fun than writing.
He mostly writes about sports, and he mainly writes profiles on different players, which he believes are some of his best works. For example, he believes that the article he wrote about a player with a very bad injury was particularly strong because it had a lot of reporting, a lot of details, it told a touching story, and there were good pictures as well.
Journalism, according to Adam, is very different from other classes because there is an element of freedom. He loves when everyone pulls together to list the possible topics to write about, and he thinks it is very fun, and after that all you have to do is choose the topic you want.
Adam believes that, in the case of journalism, you get what you put into it, so the harder you try the better off you will be. For new journalists, he says, “Experiment a bit at first, so you can find what you enjoy writing about, and then stick with what you enjoy writing, and it makes it that much easier.”
The seniors have also left lasting impressions on the other members of the journalism staff, and there are many good memories. For Alyson Haley, they made her feel comfortable in the class and helped her a lot during the beginning of the class. She says that, when she was writing her article about Broadreach, she was very nervous. So Maris, who was friends with them, set up Alyson’s interviews and made sure she was comfortable and everything was okay.
For Siobhan Richards, she has received help in writing from Alex and help with taking pictures at the spring rally from Maris. For both girls, Adam helped make the atmosphere friendly at the beginning of the year, joking with Mrs. Vessels and playing funny songs. This is the same for everyone else in journalism, and by doing these things the seniors helped keep journalism fun and friendly, which is exactly what the class needed.
