Every month, the students in the journalism class vote among their peers to determine who deserves the Journalist of the Month award. A person who has worked hard throughout the month, and who completed projects in an efficient manner and bettered the world of journalism through Hawk Headlines.
Every month Hawk Headlines will have two Journalists of The Month, one who is a rookie in the program and one who is an advanced in the program. This month, the journalism students chose Hannah Murray as the rookie Journalist of The Month and Emma DeGeorge as the advanced Journalist of The Month.
Murray is a freshman who just started journalism at the start of this year. Over the past month, Murray has done her best to learn the ropes; she has also dived right into different projects and worked in a variety of departments. She has begun working on stories and graphics for multiple sports.
“My favorite project I started was Behind the Jersey,” explained Murray.
Behind the jersey is where Murray highlights an athlete from a particular sport and makes a graphic for that athlete.
While Murray has taken on many different projects, one of her challenges has been trying to come up with content she finds both fun and entertaining. Murray recognizes the need to balance doing well in the class by coming up with ideas, but also the fact that these projects need to be fun and engaging to the audience.
“I think one of the challenges I faced was coming up with something that will engage someone who is going to read or look at the final product,” Murray explained.
Talking to advanced journalists and getting advice has been really helpful for Murray and has aided her in being successful in journalism so far.
Other journalists describe Murray as dedicated to her work and someone who is easily able to pick up the content of journalism.
Journalists like DeGeorge have been around the program for a long time and are great mentors to young journalists. DeGeorge started in her freshman year and is now a senior journalist, editor, and even runs her own class for sports journalism.
She has dedicated herself to journalism for the past four years, always putting her best foot forward in projects that she creates.
“Winning Journalist of The Month reinforced my confidence in myself,” said DeGeorge. “It made me feel good, and it made me recognize that I am constantly improving.”
DeGeorge has been the sports director for Hawk Headlines for the past two years and at the start of this school year she took charge of her very own class. While DeGeorge is a good teacher, she also works well in the field.
“I’ve been teaching that class all by myself and I’ve been recording videos at games and taking media day photos for different teams,” DeGeorge explains.
While DeGeorge has the experience, this new school year has definitely tested her skills. She had to step up and teach a whole class of rookie reporters all by herself. Her class is dedicated specifically to sports journalism, where she focuses on teaching 101 journalists the basics and fundamentals of writing as well as multimedia journalism. In the class they focus on writing features and covering Woodland sports events like photos Timber Team competitions and videos for football games.
“I’ve had my own class of all 101s [rookie journalists],” DeGeorge continued. “It makes it more challenging to complete work because they’re just learning the ropes.”
DeGeorge quickly rose to the challenge, aiding all of the rookies in learning how Hawk Headlines works, and making sure that they are fast in producing their stories.
Other journalists think that DeGeorge has good editing skills and is always willing to help out the younger journalists.
Both Murray and DeGeorge took on new tasks this month, and knew exactly what to do and how to tackle any challenge that came their way, making them this year’s September Journalists of The Month.
