WHY I DO WHAT I DO

I grew up watching the news. Every day after school my parents would turn on the Chicago NBC 5 news, and we would watch it together. I especially liked when my parents would let me stay up late, so I could watch the 10 PM news with Allison Rosati and Dick Johnson; they were my favorite. These anchors and reporters were celebrities to me, and I looked up to them and admired their work. 

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It wasn't until I was in middle school that I learned that most kids my age didn't watch the news. I simply could not believe it as it was a part of my daily routine. We would watch CNN 10 in my 6th-grade social studies class, and everyone would complain about how boring it was. However, I loved it. As I reached high school, I quickly learned that my generation has extremely short attention spans due to the rising popularity of social media platforms, like TikTok, where most videos are under 30 seconds long. Teenagers couldn't sit through a 30-minute newscast, so they weren't receiving news and had no idea all the important news that was happening in the world. My Radio & TV class, CPTV, designed a brand new, modern newscast called CPTV QuickCUT. This newscast is where my passion for journalism really began.

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I joined the Radio & TV class at Crown Point High School with no desire to pursue a career in media; however, after three years of writing and reporting news through CPTV QuickCUT, I have found my calling in life. CPTV QuickCUT went on to win the 2022 National Student Production Award for News Program, and I can proudly say I was one of anchors for the episode. Not only was it popular in a competition setting, CPHS students began watching weekly, meaning teenagers were actually paying attention to the news happening around them. I would overhear my peers in the hallways saying, "Oh, that's the girl from the newscast!" I am so grateful and honored to have been given the opportunity to anchor such a professional newscast in my first three years of high school. 

Before my senior year began, I moved four hours away to Evansville, Indiana. This is by far the biggest challenge I have faced,  not only as a journalist, but as a teenage girl trying to navigate high school. Change is scary, but it can also be so rewarding. Although I felt that my entire life was flipped upside down, and I was terrified to begin my senior year in a brand new city, it would not stop me from practicing my craft. I joined the Media Communications & Broadcasting class at the Southern Indiana Career & Technical Center where I now spend two and a half hours every day creating all forms of media. In January 2024, I began an internship as a general assignments reporter at Evansville's PBS/NPR station, WNIN. 

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For the past four years of high school, I have devoted my time to sharpen my journalism skills and practice news convergence into a modern, social-media based world. I have decided to continue my journalism education at the University of Missouri in the fall of 2024. Researching news every day has made my passion grow, and I cannot wait to start my professional journalism career in the coming years. I believe that everyone deserves to have a reliable, trustworthy news source, and as I begin my career in journalism, I strive to be a journalist everyone knows, loves, and trusts.