My first time at a journalism competition

My first time at a journalism competition was one of the most fun experiences I’ve had. On Saturday Oct. 21, a number of students from Lasarow’s class went to the CSUN for its annual Journalism Day with a few other schools such as Cleveland, Granada Hills Charter and Fairfax high schools, and schools as far as in San Diego.

There were tons of high school students getting ready to compete against one another. When I first thought about the opinion writing competition, I thought we were only going to get a short amount of time to write but the competitors got almost over an hour.

There were topics such as sports, photography, news, opinion, and features. I loved how all the staff and teachers were so helpful and helped me learn how to become a better writer. My favorite part of this experience was to see and meet new people who had the same interests as I did.

When I first saw the rubric on what to write, I panicked and started to stress out. But then I realized how easy a topic can be if you just try a method that helps you. A method I like to do is list all facts from least important to most important and plug them in to make a completed story.

After our essay competitions we had a choice of two lectures/pep talks on how to start a journalism career, tips and tricks, and how the instructors lived with journalism as their major.

I loved getting to know more and more people who had the same interests as me; a lot of the staff were helpful and really helped me with my writing skills. For example, Steve Padilla talked about the importance of “why” on features stories. This talk helped me because he told everyone the importance of how one word rearranged can mean a totally different meaning.

Another lecture I liked was the powerful women’s talk. Somali Khan talked about the importance of being woman, that women have power, pros and cons, and how journalism can affect a girl’s salary.

Overall, my first time at a writing competition helped me understand how to improve my writing skills and created a fun overall experience.