Personal Narrative

I have worked through countless nuances of being a student journalist in my nearly four years of experience—from the nitty-gritty details of AP Style to the boundless realm of graphic design. Through every lesson I have learned and detail I have grasped, no matter how minute it may be, I have come to the conclusion that journalists have a powerful responsibility: to tell a story to an audience. That overlooked aspect of journalism, the audience, has driven and continues to drive my work today as a student journalist. 

An avid consumer of all types of news media from a young age, I decided to launch my journey as a student journalist in eighth grade by joining our school’s student newspaper, Imua ‘Iolani. Prior to joining Imua, I held the belief that publishing an article was a rather simple task: you had to organize your information, come up with a compelling lead, write your story in a logical manner, and finally tie the bow with an eye-catching headline and design. The steps I had envisioned largely held true, but the complexity was far greater. 

An inexperienced journalist at the time, my first story assignment was a double truck featuring students in our residential life program who traveled all the way to Hawaiʻi from places across the globe. Mentored by senior editors at times, I began by collecting interviews to gather information. Once I had all the necessary information from my interviews and began to layout my page, I hit a major road bump. How do I tell these students’ stories so that they appeal to all the other students who read my page? 

I experimented with several different design ideas, which all yielded the same result: my page told an impassive story of ordinary high school students. The problem was that they were not “ordinary” students: coming to ‘Iolani from their hometown signified a meaningful transition. Therefore, with advice from the print editor-in-chief at the time, I curated my final design to take the shape of travel tags detailing the individual, their hometown, and the information they shared in their interview with me. Finally, a bolded sentence at the bottom of each tag revealed how an ‘Iolani education applied to each student. 

Through this design, fellow students were able to understand that their peers living on campus might have come from far away, but their stories and interests, such as filmmaking and robotics, were familiar to all students. The design change enabled me to make a clear connection with my audience.

Today, as the Overall Editor-in-Chief of Imua, I continue to inspire fellow student journalists to find new ways of connecting with their audiences, just as I did in my first story. Even if it means conquering technological difficulties to help staffers explore new media forms, I always keep the goals of my peers and the interest of the audience in mind. Through working with a variety of students on the story development and design process, I have also come to garner special relationships with them. Collectively, through these relationships, I help propel our newsroom to always be a voice for students. 

Recently, I was able to advise a pair of students working on an article about the addition of gender neutral bathrooms to our student center. As they were evaluating their quotes and complimenting illustrations, I conversed with them to get a sense of how they might respond to concerns of affected groups, one being our school’s Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA). After the conversation, one of the students attended a GSA meeting to get feedback on their piece and illustration—and to also make sure they were proceeding with the article in an informed fashion. In this way, I aided in the process of bolstering the connection between these students and their audience. 

Based on my personal experience in reporting on the integration of AP African American Studies into our school curriculum, I was also able to advise a student working on an article about Indigenous Peoples’ Day. I reinforced to the student how they should target definitions and quotes to appeal to students who may not identify with these communities. Since I do not believe in the ostracization of anybody from an article, this was an important comment of mine. In the end, my comments and revisions led to a smooth and widely-read article. 

Personally, I have continued to advance the thought process I faced in my first story assignment. As a result, my interviews, design sketches, and final quotes, among many other elements, have become more thoughtful, judicious, and precise. This very fact keeps me trekking on the journalistic trail—with each step being a new audience member of my work. In the future, I hope to continue to use journalism as a valuable outlet to share often unnoticed stories to a wider audience. I want to further dive into the realm of investigative journalism to invoke the widespread emotions of a large audience, which is often diminished in polarized reactions to certain types of journalism.