EDITING
EDITING
Natalie Ripps
Champion Journalist Portfolio
FEATURE STORIES
Spike squad
This was the first cycle story I ever wrote. Upon getting all my interviews and visuals, I began writing, and to my surprise, it came naturally. Having the opportunity to write about the girls' volleyball team and their bond interested me, and I began to learn how I am as a writer through this story. I tend to interview for connections and empathize with the subjects. I was initially assigned to write a story about how the season is going, but after my interviews, I learned about how close the girls are with each other.
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The next step
“The next step” was my second big feature story for the OMG while I was on sports staff. The story was about the practicality of pursuing athletics at the collegiate level. I interviewed many CCHS athlete alumni to hear about their path and reasons for not playing sports after high school. For one of the first times in my journalism career, I had to handle sensitive content coming from men and women years older than me. In addition, I interviewed many current student-athletes and discovered their hopes from an objective standpoint. Having to appropriately handle these people's stories about how they got to where they are in life and express it through writing greatly improved my comfort in this area.
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Carefree Croffie
CCHS senior Jojo Croffie moved from Ghana to Athens at a young age. While he remained resilient, Jojo's transition was difficult. Having the opportunity to discover his story and write a profile on this soccer player introduced a new form of journalism to me that I was not familiar with: profile writing. It was not easy for me to get the hang of this writing, but after conducting two interviews, I had the opportunity to get to know Jojo as a person as well as a subject of the story and produced a piece that accurately captures his story.
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You snooze, you lose
“You snooze, you lose” was my final feature story last year. In this piece of writing, I was allowed to go beneath the surface of high school athletics and investigate the true mental, physical and academic effects of the demands of athletics. As a student-athlete, I found this process very interesting. While the story was a large task, it helped me grow in the area of news writing and investigative content. Also, I was able to relate to many of the students being interviewed.
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Experiencing food
“Experiencing food” was the second story I took on for my second story. I was so eager to go out into the community and try new things. My advisor allowed me to reach out to local food shop “The Healthy Gourmet” to sit in on the class and write about my experience. I was so interested in putting myself in a new environment, talking to new people and trying new things. I learned the importance of putting myself out there as a journalist to appeal to a wider audience within the community, and show those who have never tried it before what it’s like. In this process, I became closer to the owner of the store, the chef who led us and a student that goes to our school who attends these classes with his grandfather.