After dozens of interviews, hours of writing and pages covered with edits resulting in tedious rewrites, five weeks of intense journalism refining have paid off.
The journalism cherubs will go back home and improve their high school newspapers, yearbooks and websites.
Every assignment and lecture taught the cherubs something new, but each student remembers one lasting lesson. These lessons will shape how they practice journalism for the rest of their lives as well as their school newspapers.
After the first full day of the program, Tracy Cook, of Pennsylvania, learned what she considers to be the most valuable lesson.
“I learned how to write quickly and meet insane 20-minute deadlines,” she said.
Cook said meeting tight deadlines helps journalists work more effectively to write a lot in a short time and to get the most important information out first.
Amy Rosch, of California, said her leads show how her writing improved during the program.
“Learning to have a strong intro, because you need a good start, will definitely help because people usually just flip through if it’s boring,” she said.
Rosch wants to make sure all leads are interesting so that her newspaper will catch more students’ attention. Other students said their most meaningful lesson taught them how to be better interviewers.
“I learned the importance of follow-up questions,” said Michael Payant, of Washington state. “You have to be willing to dig deeper.”
The program helped Payant and other cherubs improve their reporting. They learned to listen and ask important questions that come up during an interview, besides the questions that they planned in advance.
Erika Mionis, of Arizona, said she learned to leave her comfort zone to get her interviews.
“We interviewed experts and strangers on the street,” she said. “I’ll raise the idea that we should start going to outside sources because that will make our content a lot stronger.”
Mionis wants to help her high school newspaper break from only interviewing the people at her school and start including experts to add context to stories.
In addition to interviewing, learning about journalism in different forms of multimedia with broadcast labs, audio projects and flash creations gave students a better idea of what journalism calls for.
“I have a greater sense of professionalism,” said Stephany Yong, of California. “I realized that journalism isn’t just newspaper. There are a lot of other options.”
Aside from the academic lessons, Jesse Dembo, of New York, said he gained confidence.
“I learned that you don’t need to be fancy to write a good article,” he said. “You don’t always need big words or a great vocabulary. You just need good facts.”
Dembo and other cherubs learned they have the resources and skills they need to be good journalists—they just need to go out and gain experience. Using the lessons learned at the cherub program, they’ll return this fall to their high schools.
