Despite the obvious disappointment that the shells project will not be published in the near future, I am not as upset as some other people may be. It is nice to have an end result to ones work, not only so you have something to work towards, but also so you can prove to others how smart and productive you are. Unfortunately, the shells project is not the amazing, interactive, world-of-journalism-changing marvel we may have wanted to create, but that does not mean it was not worthwhile or that our effort went nowhere. This may be more for the Green Group, but stories were written for the print edition of the paper that may have never been researched otherwise.
What did you learn?
I learned that an outline helps. My biggest regret is how much time we wasted at the beginning of the semester while trying to figure out exactly what we were doing. While Bright Tree disappointed us, we did not get focused early enough to give us time for unforeseen issues. There will almost always be issues in our profession that will be out of our control that will keep us from doing our job, but planning and even expecting those will minimize the effect of those problems. It is hard to count on others to get your work done, and we have to, but by getting our work done much earlier and having a clear focus, we would have had time to adjust our plans, which we unfortunately do now not have time to do.
I learned that an outline helps. My biggest regret is how much time we wasted at the beginning of the semester while trying to figure out exactly what we were doing. While Bright Tree disappointed us, we did not get focused early enough to give us time for unforeseen issues. There will almost always be issues in our profession that will be out of our control that will keep us from doing our job, but planning and even expecting those will minimize the effect of those problems. It is hard to count on others to get your work done, and we have to, but by getting our work done much earlier and having a clear focus, we would have had time to adjust our plans, which we unfortunately do now not have time to do.
Would you do it again?
Yes. Like I said about planning, the project itself was not the problem. Despite not knowing anything about Web design and having a large portion of the project completed by someone outside the paper, this project was something I really liked. Doing something new and on a large scale is not an easy task, but something I think we should be able to accomplish by now
Yes. Like I said about planning, the project itself was not the problem. Despite not knowing anything about Web design and having a large portion of the project completed by someone outside the paper, this project was something I really liked. Doing something new and on a large scale is not an easy task, but something I think we should be able to accomplish by now
What would you keep?
Having smaller groups would help clarify everyones roles, and not put too much pressure on one member to combine and manage everything (I think Paul will agree.)
Having smaller groups would help clarify everyones roles, and not put too much pressure on one member to combine and manage everything (I think Paul will agree.)
The balance between our roles of reporter and shells reporter was never clarified, and it felt like the shells was added work instead of a part of the reporting job. I think our editors need to be brought in our the project from the get go, and the first 2-3 weeks of the semester should be used to lay out plans. Hitting the ground running at the beginning of the semester would set the right tone and also give time at the end of the semester if we run into problems.
No comments:
Post a Comment