The Daily Anthenaeum
In order to gain more real-life experience with my journalism minor, I decided to join the Daily Anthenaeum my freshman year. I became an opinion writer, which allowed me to interact with WVU students and staff. Through this position, I learned how to conduct interviews and collaborate and network with other journalists. I also learned how to pitch my ideas to a large staff and create ideas for articles quickly, while meeting strict deadlines. My favorite opinion articles that I wrote covered the topics of gap years and art majors.
I enjoyed this position, as it allowed me engage in different issues and learn other people's opinions. The Daily Anthenaem also functioned like a newsroom, which allowed me to understand my minor in journalism more than I had through my classes alone.
Mirage Magazine
After working at the Daily Anthenaeum, I decided to exercise my journalism minor in a different environment. Mirage magazine allowed me to use skills that I had already learned, such as interviewing, pitching ideas, and collaborating with other writers, while also introducing me to new skills. I learned about different aspects of the production process, including collaborating with visual artists to create artwork for my articles and managing my time, as the timeline for the publication was much longer than the Daily Anthenaeum, but my articles were much longer and required more work. I especially valued my time at Mirage Magazine because it allowed me to write about issues I was passionate about.
For the Resilience issue, I wrote a feature story about the body positivity movement (Figure 1). I also wrote a smaller story about a local nonprofit that sends books to prisons in Appalachia at the request of prisoners.
For the Oblivion issue, I wrote a feature story about the history of Tarot cards (Figure 2). I really enjoyed this topic, as I had a lot of fun researching and writing about it, as well as interviewing people. I also got to help plan the images that were featured with it.
Figure 1
Figure 2