Reporting and Writing

Over the past four years, I’ve taken on a wide range of endeavors and developed a multitude of skills in the world of journalism. Yet, there is one aspect that stands out: producing a video package. I vividly remember trying to grasp the process of producing one of these package during my first year on staff. While a video story shares many similarities with a written article, it also introduces many different skills such as filming interviews and b-roll, recording voice overs, and editing with software like Adobe’s Premiere Pro. This past year, I got the opportunity to teach this process to my high school’s Beginning Journalism class. I worked with another member of InFocus to create the following presentation, which we delivered to the aforementioned class, and later led a session at NorCal Media Day in Fall 2023.

Throughout my four years on InFocus, I’ve produced 27 video packages. Working both independently and collaboratively, I’ve explored a variety of topics including public transportation, community events and organizations, and local school board elections. Reporting on a wide range of topics, I’ve been able to interview many different sources: business owners, Paly (Palo Alto High School) students and teachers, and even my city’s mayor. While looking back at all the stories I’ve worked on, one story I especially enjoyed working on was my package about UC Berkeley's plan to build an educational space center at NASA's Moffett Field campus. For this story, I was able to travel to Berkeley's campus and talk to a student involved in a space-related organization along with shooting b-roll of the campus. In addition, I secured two other interviews, one with a source from NASA and another with a member of the Space Center project leadership team.

While producing a video package, the step that is most similar to writing an article is script writing. In this stage of the process, one compiles their interview clips (which requires a full length interview to be shortened down to 15-20 seconds), a plan for b-roll (background footage), and the script itself. In my UC Berkeley Space Center story, I chose to organize the script in a way that allowed for both NASA and the university to share their perspectives on the project and how they believed it would support the field of space-innovation. 

Although my primary focus throughout high school has been on producing video packages, I’ve gained experience with written articles through a variety of avenues. In the summer before my junior year, I was a counselor for my high school’s summer journalism camp, Camp MAC. With two other counselors, I presented on topics such as news writing and personality profiles. In order to feel comfortable teaching this material to the rising 8th and 9th graders at the camp, I had to gain exposure with the fundamentals of traditional, written journalism. Fortunately, earlier that summer, I had participated in Boston University’s Summer Journalism Academy, a two week course that provided me with a deeper understanding of the journalistic process. From the inverted pyramid to nut grafs, I got a handle of the structure and ultimately wrote my own news story which was published on the academy’s website, The Terrier.