Journalism Project

​In the Journalism Project, we learned about how the media is used to give information to the public and the bias that can accompany it. In the beginning of the project, we built background knowledge by watching movies about journalism, researching media outlets, and reading the news to get a better grasp of how to write about the event happening. Then we moved into figuring out what kind of articles we wanted to write as individuals. We did research about topics we were interested in and created outlines for the articles we would write. The final product was a professional journalism piece that would be distributed through an online news platform. We had a launch party to display our work to the greater community.


This project was very informative when it came to understanding the media driven world we live in. I have always known that media has some bias but it was interesting to see how many articles that seemed to be from a completely unbiased source and still had some underlying biases. For example, The New York times seems like a very reputable source and it is, but when you pay closer attention to the articles you can see that there are some biases prevalent.  This project helped me to realize that all news has some sort of bias and it is important to always fact check. Since we consume so much media it is important to be aware that not everything is true and it is up to the consumer to decide what to think.


I was able to develop better journalistic skills through this project. One of the skills that I believe I have improved on is using active voice in my writing. I am a very nonconfrontational person but in this project, I wrote an opinion piece which can be very confrontational.  In my first draft I was using a lot of sentences to make it sound less confrontational but in doing this, I made my article less impactful and more passive. After conferencing with Ally I went back to my work and took out words and phrases that were unnecessary. In the future when I write an article, I need to forget about being confrontational and instead write with an active voice to ensure that my writing is powerful and impactful.