MADELYN AUGUSTINE
I’ve always enjoyed writing; as a kid I would even write my own short stories. Before taking Introduction to Journalism, I had no clue what AP style was. Once I became a part of the yearbook staff, I had to quickly adapt to the new style of writing. Below you’ll find several examples of my writing from a wide variety of sections. None of them are 100 percent perfect, but the more stories I’ve written and edited the stronger my writing skills have become.
NEWS WRITING
New Exchange Program
Nineteen students from the German club and classes had traveled to Germany during the summer for the first part of a new exchange program that the school had adopted. This is the first story I wrote after joining the newspaper staff. It served as a refresher course for me in news writing because I hadn't written a news story since my sophomore year Introduction to Journalism class. It took me a few drafts to work out all of the kinks, but I eventually got the hang of it again. This story has also been published on Best of School Newspapers Online (SNO).
Published in the Catalyst online
Published in the Catalyst online
a SPECIAL honor
This year ESPN recognized 30 schools from across the country as Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools, and on the list was my school. While writing this story I had to research what exactly it meant to be a Special Olympic Unified Champion School and contact several different sources in order to get all of the facts. The final product is something I am extremely proud of and received a ranking of "Excellent" in the 2019 JEA Winter High School Competition.
Crossing Borders
During the month of September the second part of our new German exchange program took place. Twenty-two students from Waiblingen, Germany came to study at our school. Two days before they were scheduled to leave my adviser assigned me the job of writing a news story, for our first print copy of the newspaper, that combined parts from my initial story on the exchange program and facts about the time that the German students spent here. I had to rush to get an interview with one of the Germans before they left, but fortunately I was able to pull it off.
Published in Vol. 2 issue 1 of the Catalyst
The Season of Giving
Every year our school takes part in a fundraiser called Holiday Child. Quality Times raise money to buy gifts for children of low-income families around the metro area. When I turned in my first draft of this story I knew it wasn't my best quality work and my adviser let me know that he thought the same thing. I was disappointed in myself and made sure that my final draft would be something that both my adviser and I would be proud of. I found new sources and researched more information on the fundraiser, allowing me to create a more well-rounded story
Published in Vol. 2 issue 2 of the Catalyst
FEATURE
Fourth Time's a Charm
One of the other staff writers for the newspaper told me about a sophomore that had just got his black belt in TaeKwonDo, so I decided to do a story on him. He wasn't as open to being interviewed as I would've like, but I had to work with what I had. I also didn't know much of anything about the sport of TaeKwonDo, so I had to do research on what it exactly was and what it meant to be a black belt.
Published in the Catalyst online
YEARBOOK SPORTS WRITING
Dancing In Sync
When my adviser first edited our spread, he asked what the topic of our story was and upon us telling him he completely crossed it out and told my partner and I to do something different. That was the moment I learned that stories on team bonding are never an option. My partner and I were then forced to come up with an all new dominant story in three days, so we finally decided on the topic of the Dance Team's Summer camp. Since we had such a short time frame to get it done, we delegated the work; my partner did the interviewing and I did the writing. Our story ended up getting us qualified for the 2018 Neb. State Competition.
Published in the 2017-2018 Prowler Yearbook
Fresh Off the Records
After interviewing the entire JV wrestling team, I discovered that one of the freshman on the team had broken two school records. Once I learned this I knew that he had to be the subject of the dominant story for the spread. In order to get the story and the rest of the spread done on time I had to come in before school multiple times and interview sources outside of class. Once completed, this story and the rest of the spread earned the highest grade my adviser had ever given out on a spread.
Published in the 2017-2018 Prowler Yearbook
Down Go the Patriots
The varsity boys soccer team had a pretty mundane season last year which made it difficult to find an interesting tidbit to base a dominant story off of. Near the end of the season, the team had beaten one of their arch rivals and one of the top ranked teams in the state. Once this happened I knew that my partner and I had finally found something to write about. The story is not the best sports story out there; it has a pretty generic lead and typical word choice, but it did allow us to get five players on the spread.
Published in the 2017-2018 Prowler Yearbook
YEARBOOK FEATURE
Lending a Hand
Over the summer one of the juniors spent a few days a week volunteering in the NICU at a local hospital. My partner and I's initial story idea was to cover two girls who had volunteered for a week at the Humane Society, but after a rough draft edit our adviser said that the picture quality and information was not good enough to be the dominant focus of the spread. We were left scrambling trying to find something new, but once we found did it ended up as a fairly interesting story. This was the first spread I ever completed for the yearbook, so you will surely find several AP style errors and safe verbiage.
Published in the 2017-2018 Prowler Yearbook
Crazy for the Crown
The annual Homecoming dance remains relatively the same each year, so when searching for a dominant story it was hard to come up with something that hadn't been covered in the past. My group and I ended up discovering that the senior who was named Homecoming King had been told by his Kindergarten teacher that he would win Homecoming King one day. We knew that this had to be our dominant due to the irony in the situation. While writing the story I was absent from school for a few days so one of the group members gathered interviews for me. With her help, I was able to write a story with a unique twist and personality. It is not perfect, but it will make you smile.
Published in the 2017-2018 Prowler Yearbook
Big Deals in the Big Apple
When I was assigned to work on the Black Friday spread, I was instantly worried since it occurred over the time of Thanksgiving Break. One of the seniors in our class informed us that a friend of hers was heading to New York for the break, so we quickly reached out to her asking her to take candid pictures for us during her trip. The story we ended up with is not the most entertaining or cleanest story you will read. It does include some interesting quotes, but lacks the voice of secondary sources.
Published in the 2017-2018 Prowler Yearbook
Hope Through the Hoop
The Hoops for Hope basketball game takes place every year. Last year it happened to fall on a date that was during my designated week spread time frame. The fundraiser had never been covered, so I wanted to write a story that told both what occurred that year, but also what Hoops for Hope was. I had an inside scoop on how the event was organized, due to the fact that I was on Junior Class Board and they are the ones in charge of it. In terms of yearbook writing, this story was more of a news story than a traditional feature.
Published in the 2017-2018 Prowler Yearbook
Joining the Green and Black
One of the nine seniors on the varsity cheer team was a new student to our school. Since it is so rare for a senior to switch high schools on their own, I wanted to learn more on why she made the decision she did. In this story, I tried to paint a picture for the readers in the lead and I think I was able to accomplish that. The quotes throughout the story are not the strongest, but the story as a whole successfully tells her story.
Published in the 2018-2019 Prowler Yearbook
YEARBOOK THEME COPY
Third Semester
Typically in yearbook copy editors are assigned to write each division page. Even though I was not a copy editor last year, but my adviser and Editor-in-Chief asked me to write the third semester division page. I had never written copy for a division page before and the writing style is slightly different than just a typical feature story. There are surely AP style errors and a slight use of cliché wording. As a whole the story capture the essence of third semester, but it could have gone into more detail.
Published in the 2017-2018 Prowler Yearbook
Published in the 2018-2019 Prowler Yearbook
This year for the 2019 JEA Winter High School Competition, my adviser had myself and my Co-Editor-in-Chief write a theme copy. We have not actually designed the division pages for this year's book, so I had free reign on the length of the story. The story I wrote for First Semester ended up winning a "Honorable Mention" award in the competition.
First Semester
