Journalism students participate in “writing day”
Normally the Knight Errant meets during sixth hour every day. In order for students to focus on creating stories and meeting deadlines, some of the Knight Errant staff spent an entire day working on journalism.
Although the school year is ending and the Knight Errant staff begins to prepare for summer, stories still need to be written. For this reason it was necessary for Knight Errant advisors Ms. Tiffany Joseph and Ms. Kari Koishol to call for a day-long session where Knight Errant staff members from writers to video journalists gathered to focus purely on a story.
[The writing day] helps to improve quick reporting, coming up with a story, writing a story and publishing the story all in one day.
— Ms. Tiffany Joseph
On Friday, April 28, some of the Knight Errant staff members focused on quickly writing a story to improve their ability to meet deadlines. “One of the key skills in journalism is quick writing and today is a time to focus on that skill in order to better help Knight Errant writers and everyone involved in the Knight Errant to become more productive,” Koishol said.
For many participants, this session was meant to be used by focusing on their particular stories in order to improve their time-management skills while also producing quality material. Staff members from various segments of the Knight Errant staff participated in this event.
Sophomore staff writer Kailyn Pedersen will be taking on an editing role next year, so this event helped her prepare for that. Due to their ambitious goal of completing their stories by 2:30 p.m., writers like Pedersen needed to prioritize what they want to accomplish and how they wished to do so. “Right now I am working [on] interview[ing] people while also writing a story. My story has changed a lot over the period of today, and it is about how there is a lot of pressure on students attending ‘good’ colleges and how ivy league colleges and other colleges are stigmatized within BSM,” Pedersen said.
While writers are working hard to gather information through interviews and other resources found within BSM, junior graphic editor Will Krane and sophomore videographer Connor Lawler both aided other Knight Errant staff members in order to better improve the stories being written. Along with helping the writers within the session, both are also ferverishly working on their own individual stories. “I am a graphic designer and I help fill in [different roles] where things need to happen. I help gather footage and interview,as well as helping a story about tech within the theater. I am in the theater program so I can help navigate around with that story as well,” Krane said.
Lawler has also assisted with the stories with his videography skills. Lawler has taken on an important role within the Knight Errant community by taking videos to go with stories while also assisting with any technical difficulties that arrive through the process of producing stories. “Currently I am taking videos of interviews and other material for stories, and in particular [contributed] to my story about plagiarism and cheating within the school and the modern technology [used] to help make cheating easier in schools,” Lawler said.
Although writing sessions like these don’t happen very often and are fairly new within the Knight Errant, many believe they are already making a difference and improving both the Knight Errant as a whole and the individuals within. “I do believe this journalism session is more productive than the regular class period because it is a firm deadline and we have all the necessary people like photographers and videographers in the same room at once so you don’t need to track people down. It also helps to improve quick reporting, coming up with a story, writing a story and publishing the story all in one day, along with working with other people in teams,” Joseph said.
