David's Journalism Year In Review

I joined the journalism class after the second quarter, so I have only been in the class for one semester. The one semester I have been in the class has thoroughly impacted me in a profound way. As someone who has enjoyed writing for a long time, I was very eager to start writing and exploring the universe of journalism. I immediately dove into writing articles for the website. My first article covered protest music and its effects that have been seen over time. The article didn’t just focus on one genre like other articles do. Instead, mine went over different eras and genres. I covered different issues from many different eras such how bands like CCR changed views on the Vietnam war in the United States and how U2 where one of the leading voices in Ireland during the Troubles in Ireland. and how people found refuge and hope in music. I very much enjoyed my first article and was looking forward to writing more, but before I could get to that, I had to first do something I’ve never done before which was speaking on a podcast. The podcast that I spoke on first was about Snapchat and how it’s affecting teenage relationships. As the only man in the discussion, I had different opinions than everyone else which created a perfect environment for a discussion. Personally, I enjoyed the podcast very much, and I believe that it should have been published. A problem that I believe was one of the biggest issues of the class was how hesitant everybody was about publishing the podcasts. We did around four podcasts but we never posted any. The judgement of the podcast was a little too strict in my opinion. For a group of teenagers, I felt we did above what should be expected. For next year, my biggest change would definitely be more podcasts.

After my first article, I went on to do my longest article. The article covered the topic of comparing and contrasting the two biggest religions in the world, Islam and Christianity. Religion is a topic that I'm very passionate and educated about, coming from a Catholic school, so writing about religion was something that I was very eager about. The article itself took about a week and a half to write and ended up being a twelve minute read. It was my favorite article, and I wanted to write more of them. I also spoke on another podcast with a student that proceeded to leave the journalism class. The article dealt with the world of racing. My peer and I who spoke are both racing drivers ourselves so it was very easy and interesting to talk about. The podcast was decent, but there was definitely a lot of room for improvement. This podcast was also never published. Although I do believe that these podcasts should be just published, I do believe that this one was not very good. There was definitely room for improvement.

Continuing on with the semester, I wrote another article. This article was about falling literacy rates and how to counter its effects. For me, this article was important to write because I have a younger brother who struggled with literacy, so I wanted to raise awareness to the topic. The article was centered around struggles in the United States and how it compares to other countries. I really enjoyed researching and writing this article. After the completion of this article, I had to tackle the tasks of my Passionate Writing Article which dealt with showing my passion for writing and helping others gain it. The Passionate Writing Article was one of the only assignments that our teacher, Mr. Dane, told us we had to do it. Every other article I wrote was my idea. That’s definitely what I think made this class immensely special because every other writing class that I’ve been in I was only allowed to write about what my teacher wanted me too. This year, I had the freedom to write, and I believe that this Journalism class was very beneficial and I'm looking forward to continuing contributing to this program.

Interested? Find more by David here!

ABOUT DAVID

David Ramirez is a 14 year old freshman at Centner Academy. He shows a great interest in writing and looks to further excel his capabilities. He enjoys informative writing and writing for entertainment. David looks forward to sharing his writing with everyone. Outside of writing, David is a prolific musician and a race car driver.