Reporting & Writing
"Journalism is what maintains democracy. It’s the source for progressive social change" Andrew Vachss
My desire to create didn’t begin with a love for writing. In fact, my affinity for journalism was one of the last things to come to fruition in the time that I have been creating.
When I first started making art, I was curious about the people around me. The stories behind every individual’s persona; the motivation behind actions, words, and revelations that stem from community members.
My freshman year of high school, I realized that reporting and writing are very similar to creating an art piece. Each mark on the page tells the viewer a story about the subject of the work. Whether it’s in writing or art form really just determines the exact way in which the information is processed. I began to gravitate towards writing during my sophomore year when I joined The Whirlwind, my high school's student-run magazine. My intentions for my work remain the same: I want to document people. Their experiences, their triumphs, their struggles, their lives.
By combining information and emotions in an unbiased way, journalism is the true pinnacle of storytelling. My reporting and writing pieces show a pocket of the human condition in my community that I have had the privilege of documenting.
Photo by Tyler Stacy
News
School Board Controversy News Package
I began reporting on controversial school board decisions in the Greater Albany Public Schools District last year when I noticed that adults in the community were being asked their thoughts and opinions about our education, but not those that were directly affected by the board's decisions: the students. Below is a three-part news package detailing the circumstances that led to the termination of Superintendent Melissa Goff. Including the stories of students that felt strongly about the situation is what I believe sets this package apart from other articles that have since been written about the situation by news outlets such as The Democrat Herald, OPB, and Associated Press.
Students protest next year’s schedule change through democratically driven methods
This story is about the students that began the protest against the proposed schedule change for the 2021-22 school year. The district did not consult students before announcing that they would be cutting a class period all together and no longer operating on a block schedule, and students took it into their own hands to reach the district with their concerns. I contacted students that were arranging methods of protest and advocating for minorities in the situation, as well as the minorities that were worried about how their own lives would change. The goal of bringing awareness to this situation was to promote informed conversation between all sides, students and adults alike.
Superintendent responds to student led advocacy in opposition to schedule change
As the situation escalated, West Albany students arranged a walkout during school hours to protest the proposed schedule change. In this article, I detail the events of the walkout in addition to an exclusive interview with Superintendent Melissa Goff and her side of the story. Because the situation was so divided, I had to spend a lot of time balancing the arguments of each side in this article. With the help of reporter and classmate Tyler Stacy, I wanted to show the emotional and educational stakes that were at risk and provide context for each side of the argument.
The School Board Rundown: An update on the major changes from the school board in the last six months
For the last installment in this series, I wrote this piece along with reporter Tyler Stacy to summarize the events that happened over the summer of 2021. In this article, we have two opposing school board member sources, one of which declined all further interviews but ours. In addition to the school board members, we also reported on the meeting in which Goff’s termination was announced, the community response to the change, and the interim superintendent Rob Saxton. This story appeared in print as a two-page spread in order to inform students of the events since the protests in June.
This series of stories is still an ongoing news package that will be updated by The Whirlwind staff as new information comes out.
In-Depth Analysis News
Relating national news back to a small town in Oregon has been one of the most insightful practices of being a journalist. While scrolling through headlines on news sites, it's easy to distance ourselves from each situation. I conduct my in-depth topic reporting by doing extensive research on a national topic, finding those in my community whose lives are directly affected by the subject, and reporting on their stories.
OJEA
In-Depth News Story: Superior 2021
One in Six: One in six Gen Z adults identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, and that number continues to grow as teens explore their identity
OJEA
Illustration: Superior 2021
I wrote this article when I found a study that was circulating Instagram and Twitter claiming that Generation Z was the most openly LGBTQ+ generation ever. After verifying that the source was a valid documentation of information, I reached out to some of the members of West Albany that are openly LGBTQ+. I wanted to show a behind-the-statistics look at what it means to come out as someone who is not straight. I checked with every source multiple times to make sure that they were comfortable being published in the article. The story ran in the special 2020-21 edition of the magazine as a two-page spread.
Feature
Thrifting Trend Feature Package
Noticing when a topic becomes a trend is a very important quality in an entertainment journalist. Writing for entertainment is always a fun challenge for me, because it’s difficult to develop a new angle on topics that are quickly becoming mainstream and consistently being discussed. Nevertheless, I love to talk to people about the things that they’re interested in, and weaving in elements of news with the excitement of a new trend in this package about thrifting was a great learning opportunity.
OJEA
In-Depth News Package: Excellent 2021
Political Pieces: thrifted clothes are more than just additions to a wardrobe
This is the centerpiece of the package; the main story that takes readers on a deep-dive into sustainability and fast fashion. I explore topics of textile waste, gentrification, and gender norms while analyzing the thrifting trend uproar. In order to make this piece as informative as possible, I pulled my information from a wide array of students with a diverse amount of experience and knowledge of thrifting in addition to professional studies. Originally, this piece was a combination of all three of the stories that I eventually broke up to create this package. Breaking it up gave me the space to organize the political aspects of thrifting into this article.
Meet Maryn Chambers: the student with her own business based around thrifting
From the beginnings of her business to her advice for new thrifters, I interviewed Maryn Chambers about her experience building her brand and gaining an audience. This was one of my favorite profiles I’ve written. The interview was informative yet entertaining, and Chambers was passionate about the subject and truly believed in the work she is doing. When I decided to make one of the parts in this package a profile on her, I reached out to Chambers to confirm that she was comfortable with that and ask clarifying questions.
What’s in Your Second Hand Closet?: We asked thrifters to send in their favorite pre-loved finds and their reason for thrifting
This interactive slideshow addition to my package aims to highlight a wide variety of West Albany students and graduates that frequently go thrifting. To put this piece together, I reached out to sources over Instagram to gain insight into the reasons that they choose to thrift and to showcase their unique style. The diversity in each answer guided my research for the main story and gave me great insight into the origins of the trend and why it’s become so popular among teenagers. It also provides a way for readers to see the faces behind the trend.
Magazine Feature
Exploring a feature topic for each magazine with The Whirlwind’s special report team has shown me a lot about how writers can work together to create a comprehensive overview of an important subject. I love writing magazine features because I get to not only experience stories playing out in real-time, but I get to find common threads and have insightful conversations with other members on the special report team.
Six Hands, 600 Meals: A look into the day-to-day of the three women feeding an entire student body
For our third issue of the 2021-22 school year, our magazine feature topic was centered around food, and the cover story was about the three women that work in West Albany’s kitchen. I worked with reporter Gabi Emery to create a spread on this topic. We spent two or three of our free periods and lunch periods in the kitchens, observing the women and their preparation. On-site observational reporting as done in this piece offers a special type of insight into the lives of the people that we choose to feature in each issue.
OJEA
In-Depth News Story: Best in State 2022
Never Alone, Always Lonely: Exploring the generational and societal shifts in teen connections
For one of my last stories of my high school journalism career, I wanted to take a long-form feature in the back of the magazine. This article explores concepts of loneliness and depression in relation to the amount of time that students spend on their screens. I did three in-depth interviews with our school’s psychology teacher, biology teacher, and the student body president at the time in addition to analysis of statistics drawn from a randomly selected sample of the student population. This article furthered my understanding of feature journalism through the amount of research it took.
Opinion
Signed Commentary
Writing opinion articles is rare for me to do, but I believe that a diverse selection of opinion pieces are incredibly important in a well-rounded news source. When I choose to write a commentary piece on a topic, I tend to write it very similarly to how I write in-depth news, but with added elements that make it confrontational and convey a strongly supported belief.
OJEA
Signed Commentary: Excellent 2021
Mistakes in Marketing: Capitalism has influenced almost every beauty decision the female binary makes, especially when it comes to “self care”
Because I’m someone who is intrigued by marketing, this commentary piece had been an idea in the back of my mind months before I ever wrote it. I knew that harmful advertising practices consistently make life harder for women, but before writing this article I didn’t have all the evidence to produce a truly convincing argument. While cross-checking information, I came across the 2019 Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reported that the number of racial minorities in marketing positions was heavily skewed at less than 20%. I used this knowledge to guide my argument and write this commentary piece.
Sports
Sports News
The genre of sports has endless opportunities to showcase human emotions in their raw state. Before last year, I was under the impression that sports couldn’t be meaningful or make societal waves like news or features could. I was proved wrong last year when I joined the Sports section of The Whirlwind for a few weeks and began consuming more sports journalism. I don’t write much for sports, but I also don’t want to take the power it has in a publication for granted.
Scholastic Writing
Journalism: Honorable Mention 2022
Traveling Athletes: As Coronavirus sweeps the states, these athletes remain committed to their sports
During quarantine, the amount of lives that were uprooted was monumental, and there were many angles that The Whirlwind took on documenting individual experiences. During my time in our sports section, I wanted to write a piece about the resilience of athletes during this time. I contacted my two sources, who were continuing to travel and compete under Coronavirus regulations at the time. There were so many factors that went into their decisions and circumstances, and I’m glad that I was able to document their individual stories in this article.
