Major Reflection: 2025-2026
Dear Mr. Kandell,
This year has certainly been a very eventful journalism journey for me (I can’t really think of any other adjective that encompasses the true breadth of my experiences!) In beginning journalism last semester, I built on the foundation of journalism I had gotten from Camp MAC the summer before freshman year.
Through completing hands-on assignments in reporting, design, photography, and AP Style, I developed the basic skills of journalism I would need to thrive in a publication. However, not only did I learn tangible skills, beginning journalism was an incredibly fun class that allowed me to find new passions. I had already known before this year that I loved writing, but I did not yet know that journalism would add entirely new aspects to layer on top of writing.
When writing, your final product consists of just writing. But with journalism, you must research, interview, write, create art, take photos, design, and refine, refine, refine — and only until then, you have a final product. That intricate process is what makes journalism so truly valuable for me.
After a month of hard work on a story, that feeling of relief and satisfaction when you place your story is unimaginable!
In my first two cycles on the Verde staff, I struggled significantly with meeting deadlines. In my first cycle, since I wasn’t proactive with conducting my interviews, I fell behind on one of my feature stories, finishing my text on the second last day of production, and placing two days late. I also ended up completely dropping my other feature story.
In my second cycle, I made progress, but my timeliness was still a little rough. While my feature story was placed on time, and the text of my culture story was complete quite early into the cycle, I ended up dragging the design of my culture story. When I started my design during production, relying on other busy staffers to complete art, compounded by subpar communication between my partner and I, led to us placing several days after the end of production.
Even (maybe especially?) with my newly-designated role as features editor, in terms of timeliness, this last cycle was much better than the last two! I finalized the text of my profile story a week before the final deadline, and finished placing it on the second day of production. This gave me the opportunity to dedicate lots of time to give detailed edits, assistance, find interviews, and give final checks to feature stories.
There’s two stories I wrote on Verde this semester that I’m very proud of: my culture story about LGBTQ+ media last cycle, and my profile about Paly phenom athlete Jordan Johnsson this cycle.
In my culture story, I explored mainstream media's role in shaping stereotypes of the LGBTQ+ community. By interviewing members of the LGBTQ+ community, It’s given me the opportunity to share real perspectives, bringing positive coverage to a topic that’s becoming more contentious and polarizing.
In my profile story, I wrote about athlete Jordan Johnsson, who broke Paly’s 100m all-time record by nearly a tenth of a second as a sophomore. Writing about such a significant event, and about a person from our community who’s probably going to become famous one day, showed me how journalism can be used to shine a light on important topics and figures.
Regarding my new role as an editor, I’m quite proud of the work in leadership I have done thus far. By proactively checking in with stories under my section, I’ve quickly identified stories that fell behind, and helped the writers assigned to those stories in the writing and designing process, and find and conduct interviews.
Next year, I’m hoping to develop two skills. First, is improving my design skills. In my designs this year, some of my spreads were bland, and could use more visual elements to attract readers. The second is adding more unique perspectives to my stories by conducting interviews with a broader range of people (students, parents, experts, teachers, staff, coaches etc.) This year, I envisioned that my stories would incorporate a broad range of interviews, but when I came to actually reaching out and conducting those interviews, I fell short.
Nonetheless, I feel like I’ve come a long way this year, and I’m super excited for the next on Verde!
Thanks, Justin