Diversity

 In all honesty, I believe I did a pretty good job of covering stories within my beat, College Park. I think I have learned a lot about how to expand my knowledge on contacting people, interviewing people, and coming up with questions, especially about who to contact. I believe in the beginning of the semester, I was intimidated because pitching ideas was very difficult for me because I had to think of much more than just basic information, I learned to dig a bit deeper. As I was able and I am thankful for joining a second news organization, La Voz Latina, in which the majority of my clips are published. As it did become frustrating getting in contact with sources as some blew me off or did not want to talk, I learned to be patient. However, I did like exploring the different story topics within my beat. I think with some assignments, I had to quickly be on my feet to think of an alternate plan because I learned when you have a story idea but that idea does not work out, you have to have a backup plan. This happened with my crime story when I was going to discuss a fatal accident that occurred in Upper Marbolo, but I realized it would not be newsworthy. So I decided to focus on the crime rate of fatal accidents in Maryland, which was a much better idea. Additionally, learning to work in a time crunch is something I am learning to become better at, as I had always done my work ahead of time, I believed that when life does get in the way, I learned to adapt to that and figure my time management.  However, I did like exploring the different story topics within my beat. From what I saw around my beat, the people are nice, especially around the campus area, which even one bad encounter does not mean other encounters would be horrible. Lastly, what I could have done better was interview more people, which as someone who is an introvert, allowed me to get out of my comfort zone and to become social. I think posting more on social media is something I should work more on as we are given a platform to talk about upcoming events or even post the stories we have written for the public especially in the future when I do get a job whether as a reporter or copy-editor.