Media Participation Project - Alexandra Andreassi

For my Media Participation Project, I decided I wanted to try writing for UMD's Diamondback student run newspaper. In high school, I was on the newspaper staff so I wanted to see if I would like writing for one of Maryland's papers as well.
To start, I first had to attend the General Assignments meeting. They're held on the third floor of the South Campus Diner at 8:00 pm on Sundays. One of the editors of the Diamondback named Jenny Hottle runs this meeting and there she proposes different stories for students to claim, investigate, and then write about. She also asked us all if we had any other stories to propose. Several did this and she confirmed if it was a good idea to pursue or not.
During the meeting, none of the stories she offered to us appealed much to me and I had no idea where to start for proposing my own piece. I left the meeting unsure of what I was going to write about.
When I got back to my dorm, I started researching. I knew I didn't want to write anything political or sports related, knowing they already had sections of the Diamondback with writers designated to those subjects who were well trained and actually knew what they were talking about. I started exploring the opinion section's articles on the Diamondback website to see what they were writing about and how they were making their writing appealing to the student body. Every article I found was funny, interesting, sassy, and about something a student would definitely want to read.
I decided to write something that would appeal to my immediate peers, Freshman Connection students.
I had recently heard some kids talking in my classes about how they weren't liking UMD so far and all the reasons that could possibly go along with that. Some were already even talking about transferring. I, liking almost everything about my time here thus far, wanted to write something that would encourage my peers to keep pushing through and keep trying to find their place. So I wrote about freshman expectations and how they aren't always necessarily true. When I was finished, I emailed my article to the Diamondback's opinion editor.
The following Sunday tonight, I went back to the South Campus Diner to get my form for the project signed. The editor I had met the week before, Jenny Hottle, directed me to the opinion editor, Maggie Cassidy. I talked with her for a bit, reminded her of the article I had sent her, and she signed my form.
Writing an article for the Diamondback influenced my journalistic aspirations by reminding me what I had loved about working for my high school's newspaper. I always enjoyed figuring out something that people would really want to read about, actually writing it, and even making the layout for that page of the paper. I would like to continue to write stories for the Diamondback and maybe even join the staff. But while I did like my experience with the Diamondback, I would also be interested in looking into other media outlets on campus such as the radio station or the TV station. I have a little bit of experience with TV production from high school but I think it would be exciting to get really involved with something like that on campus, to explore the different forms of media more in depth. In sum, writing for the Diamondback sparked my interested in other journalistic aspirations as well as print work. I hope to get involved with either Maryland's TV or radio station sometime later this year.