BayleeJComer

Semester 2 // 2018-2019

  • My best work this semester would have to be the April or May issue. I believe my designs were some of the best I have done this semester. Most of my stories have gone online this semester, but my best story would be the Teacher’s march to protest that went online. This was the most important story I covered, and I think that my interviews and quotes in this story was the best out of the others.
  • I think my standing sports stories need more work. They seem impersonal after I have read them again. I think I need to get better quotes, and use them in a better way in my stories.
  • The best lesson I have learned this semester would be that less is definitely more. White space is always good to have in a design. Also, I learned how to play with black and white to better the designs, because even though our paper is mainly in black and white, you can still play with the color there.
  • I am most proud of the skills I have learned this year for newspaper. I think that being able to multitask is an important skill, and I have definitely learned that in this class. I have also expanded my leadership skills and my creativeness as well. These are all important to any future career I might have.
  • My best contribution to the newspaper has been being able to take on more and more work. I have also contributed in designing a lot more this semester, which is something I enjoy a lot.
  • I definitely have hit many of my goals this semester. My main goal was to continue working on designs and making them better which I have achieved. I also had a goal of expanding my interview skills more, which has been a bit tougher this semester than last semester. I think that is something that I should continue working on next year.
BayleeJComer

Semester 1 // 2018 – 2019

  • I think my writing has improved greatly this semester. I tried to interview more people for my stories, and it made it easier to write with more quotes and information. My stories appeared to be longer the more I wrote. I think my team dynamic story was the best that I had written in a long time. It seemed to be a story that I cared about and could relate to a lot, so that is probably why I could write so much.
  • I would love to continue working on designing. I want my designs to be more creative than they have been before. I want to be able to design a center spread in one issue next semester. I would love to be able to create more design appealing things that can go in the paper, and even online. I think the more things we put out online, the more people are going to read it. I would like to help to make the website more appealing to readers, and more easily read.
  • I think my best work in these issues from this semester definitely all come from the December issue.  My stories and designs seemed to be the best that I had done all semester.  I tried to use more dominant pictures and incorporate some white space into my pages. I wrote the team dynamic story, which I think was my best story. That story was the best writing I had done in a long time. I tried to interview all that I could and come up with really good questions.
  • My biggest contribution to the staff was probably designing this semester. I enjoyed designing a lot this issue, even though it usually took up more of my time than writing did. Next semester, I will contribute page designing and writing more than this semester.
  • My goals for this semester had been to have better interview skills, writing stronger stories and to go to more events. I think I have achieved having better interview skills as the semester went by. I tried to record who I was interviewing so I could get their exact quotes. My stories have also gotten stronger as I interviewed better and worked harder on them. I still need to work on going to more events and taking pictures though. It has been harder to do that this semester.
  • My goals for next semester are to keep writing better, and to take more pictures. I want to have better pictures to go online and in the paper. I will try to do this by going to more events. I want to go to at least one event per every issue to take pictures. And I want to take a variety of sports pictures too. I want to be more creative when I design as well. I am going to try to find more inspiration from other sources and incorporate that into my designs.
BayleeJComer

Semester 2 // 2017 – 2018

  1. I think my best work in my portfolio is my writing a designing. The May issue was my best in designing. I designed all off the news section on pages one through three. My best writing pieces were the fake news story and some of my feature stories, like the review over Charity Miles. I also liked my story on college recruitment in the December issue because I worked extremely hard on it.
  2. Some of my standing sports stories could have used more work. I had a standing sport for each season this year, and I think that I got into the habit of writing the same thing over and over every issue. I felt like none of the stories really sounded different, and I never noticed until the second to last issue.
  3. One lesson I have learned that will be beneficial for me in the future is to just throw yourself into an environment and try as many things as you can. By this I mean that at the start of this year, I was very scared and not sure of anything I did. I just put myself out there and decided to do my best and contribute to the paper. I came to love it and decided that I would base my future career on it.
  4. My best contribution to the newspaper is probably designing the news section. I think that this helped the paper and freed the co-editors from being so busy. I think I also learned a lot from doing it.
  5. My main goal from last semester was to take more pictures, and I definitely achieved that. I challenged myself by taking more and more pictures at events that I knew I would be at. I am now somewhat able to come up with headlines, but I should try to be more creative when I think of them.
BayleeJComer

Semester 1 // 2017 – 2018

  1. I believe I have improved on my writing and interviewing this semester. At the beginning in August and September, I felt that I was really shaky and I did not really know what to do. I was really nervous to go and talk to people for my story, and I didn’t really want to. Now in the last couple of issues, I’ve gotten the hang of the way everything works.
  2. The areas I want to continue working on are my designs for my pages. I think I have a lot to learn on Adobe Indesign and I am ready to continue it. I think I can work on spacing a little bit more. I also think I should try and look back for any errors on my page before we go to press.
  3. I think my best work was in the November issue. I really like the way the design on my page worked out. I also think my stories were good, and not that bad. I think my interviewing was pretty good as well.
  4. My biggest contribution this semester was taking on the role of News Editor. I think that when I took on that role, I was able to contribute more to the paper. I became more valuable to the staff when I became a designer. But I also had to figure out how to split my time equally between my stories and my page design. I think that in the last two issues, I have achieved that.
  5. I met many of my goals this semester. I was able to take more pictures, and figure out how to use a camera correctly. I also know how headlines work, and what goes into them. I am able to use my time wisely in class and with my deadlines. I think that I have met my goals accordingly this semester.
  6. My goals for next semester are to continue focusing on taking pictures. I want to get better at deciding what the ISO on the the camera should be for wherever I am. I also want to try and create headlines more. I have learned want can and cannot be in a headline, but now I want to be able to come up with them.