Progress blog wave 2

For my article right now, i'm working on interview question to give to different administators/workers at the school about the Tower. A couple of people I am thinking of asking is Mr. Beaver because students have said he knows some legends, Mrs. Handerhan, and possibly some students or a janitor who have actually been up inside the tower. I still need to think up more quesions so i'm mostly focusing on that right now.

Proposal blog

for the second wave, I have no idea what i'm going to do. I still trying to think of things that are of interest to me and would be interesting to to other people. While i still enjoy the subject of my last article, i don't want to stay on that topic for every article i write so i'm kind of at a stand-stil right now.

Reflection blog

I think my strengths was the opening for my article. I feel that i was really able to clearly explain what my article was going to be about. my weakness was trying to find a way to put all the information into my article without making it too "wordy". Overall, the experiance was fun and I really enjoyed the peer edit and I feel that it helped a lot to make my article better.

Project Update

So far on my project, I have narrowed down the haunted location to visit to a list of 3; Monmouth University, The Malboro Slaughterhouse, and The Dempsey house in Leonardo. The one I am most leaning towards is monmouth university because i know a professor there and students who have attended the college who could share stories with me. The professer also said that he could tell me stories of hauntings at the college that his colleges experienced. I still need to talk to the people working at the University and get a good footing on the start of my article.

Project Proposal

For the Tower Review,I'm working on the community page. My specific topic is Weird NJ articles. A plan of action would be to visit places that are within driving distance to see if the rumors are true. Some problems that we can encounter is not be able to go to the haunted locations.

Blog #5

What did you expect when you first entered the class? Has the class gone with or against these expectations? What information, practice, or skill has been the most valuable to you? What class activities helped? What information, practice, or skill has been least vauable to you? What class activities did not help? What are you most excited for when we start next quarter? what are you most anxious about? What has left you unfulfilled? In other words, what do you wish we had done as a class but didn't? What would you like more information about, or practice with?

When i first entered the class i thought that it would be all about journalism such as writing articles, piecing things together, giving good interviews and things like that. The class has gone with my expectations, and we also talked about things i didn't expect we would, such as learning about leads and bias's. The practice that is most valuable to me is writing reviews and editorials because those arethe two things that we're probably going to be focusing on in the class. The practice that was least valuable was the "This-I-Believe" essays because i didn't see how they related to the class. Writing practice editorials and reviews really helped because they helped me to get an idea of the feel of each piece. Once again, the This-I-Believe piece didn't really help with anything. Next quarter I am excited AND anxious about starting the actual online magazine because now everyone will be reading what I write and will be able to judge. I felt in class we could have taken an extra day to talk about our strengths and weaknesses as writers and what we enjoy writing about because i think it would give everyone a better understanding of each other.

Blog #4

When writing articles for the Tower Review, what will be more important to consider? What do you think will be the easiest part of the process? What do you anticipate being most difficult? How can you combat these concerns? Discuss your understanding of the newspaper article format am the incorporation of that information for the purpose of the class.

My understanding of the newspaper article format is that you need to include the who, what, when, where, why and how. You also need to give the reader a clear explanation of whats going on. Your view cannot be biased and it should have a catchy lead that draws the reader in. This information applies to the class because we need to have catchy and informative articles in order to gain a readership, and we can't be biased in some of our topics because it could upset students and/or teachers. The most important thing to consider when we are writing for the Tower Review will be that we have to include the five W's and the how. Another important thing will be looking over the article and taking the bias out of it, even if you feel strongly about a certain topic. The easiest part of the process will probably be picking a topic to write about. The hardest part will be going about gathering information and getting interviews for the article. We can combat these concerns by asking the subjects for interviewing nicely and respect them if they say no.

Blog #3

Reflect Upon your experiances this week.What was most difficult? What was easiest? What knowledge have you gained about the process of pulication? What knowledge have you gained about yourself as a contributer?

The most diffiult part of this week was choosing which ideas we should write about. Everyone had really great ideas so finding something to write about and then condensing it down or trying to see which topics would be do-able. Th easiest part was setting up the layout of the page. We were easily able to place our topics in a proper catagory where it would be best fitted. Some knowledge i have gained as a publisher is that deciding what goes in a paper isn't always as easy as it seems. Some articles seemed fun but for whatever reason we weren't able to follow through with them. I also learned that not every idea that you have will necessarily make it into the paper because there's simply not enough room. Some things i learned about myself as a contributer is to be open to new ideas and opinions. Not everyone is going to love your ideas, and you may end up loving someone else's idea for an article. Another thing i learned is not to take it personally when your idea does not make it into the online magazine. It's not that your idea is bad, there just may be other complications that make it difficult to come through with your piece,

Blog Assignment #2

Now that we have drafted a mission statement, consider it's purpose and position on the homepage. What did you experience while contributing to the drafting of this statement? What do you hope it will communicate about the Tower Review? How may it assist in the development of readership? What do you personally plan to do in order to acheive the goals established for this year?

I think that the mission statement should be the fist thing you see on the homepage so people can understand what we're all about. While drafting our mission statement, I began to understand what the magazine is going to be like, and it made me excited to see it all comming together and our group working together to pitch ideas. I hope that when people read our mission statement, they'll have an idea of what our paper is all about and wher we're comming from. I also hope that it makes them feel comfortable enough to send in their own ideas and to keep coming back and reading our paper. I hope that when people begin to understand where we're coming from, our reaership will grow and branch out to more people. In order to acheive these goals, I will try to write exciting, relatable pieces that will spark the interest of all of our possible readers.

Blog Assignment #1

Assess the class community as you feel it has developed so far. What strengths do you see in your peers? What weaknesses? What can you do as a staff member to better this class community?

I feel that the writing community we have so far is very supportive and open to new ideas. I think everyone in the community has something good that they can contribute to our online paper, and probably the only weakness is not knowing how to go about creating it. As a staff member, i will be supportive of my classmates and give them constructive critisism to help them become better writers.