Media Participation Project

For my media participation project, I wanted to contribute to a magazine or newspaper on campus by writing an article. I did not want to choose a specific topic to write about, because I wanted to get a feel for being assigned a topic that I may not know anything about. I chose to email a girl named Jamie who was one of the main editors of the Campus Trainer. She is a student here at the University of Maryland and like me, she is majoring in Journalism. While talking to her, I really appreciated how together she seemed, and even with all of work on top of editing the magazine, she was uniform and clear about the whole procedure of me writing the article.

This magazine is student run and it is all about health and exercise. Jamie emailed back very quickly and gave me multiple options to write about, but she said that the article they most wanted in their magazine was about Gluten-free diets. She wanted me to research the effects that Gluten has on some people and why people who may not be allergic to it decide to go on Gluten-free diets. This topic may sound like it does not have much depth, but after writing it, I learned a lot about these diets and the health problems that go with being allergic to Gluten.

While writing this article, I found structuring the writing to be the hardest part. All Jamie assigned me was the topic, so I did not know the specifics that she wanted me to mention or how she wanted me to organize my paragraphs. This type of writing was very different than writing any english paper, because I did not have an outline or a specific structure to follow. By the end, I realized that I preferred this way of writing, because I could rely on what I thought sounded best, and the Jamie said she was happy with the finished product.

I have yet to see my article in the newspaper, because the edition has not come out yet, but I am very intrigued to see how it looks on paper, because I sent the final draft to Jamie over email on a word document. Writing this article made me feel very professional and it gave me a taste of what working at a newspaper or a magazine would be like. Also, communicating with Jamie helped me practice talking to other employees and making plans about times to meet and what to write.