Personal statement
In a completely online environment, it’s been harder than ever to maintain readership on our award-winning newsmagazine’s website. In previous years, our pages have been filled with dynamic photos and videos — all of which made digesting information much more enticing to our student readers. But just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, our typical videos and photos disappeared. As we made the abrupt change into pandemic life, I immediately took the last opportunity to go to Monta Vista Track & Field’s annual track meet, Rustbusters.
Later, in the year, I wasn’t ready to admit defeat to COVID — one of my favorite types of videos to both create and watch are man on the street videos. I began the year with a Man on the Street style video about athletes’ opinions on playing in a different season, complete with B-roll and interviews conducted over Zoom.
As sports editor, it was hard for me to fathom how I was going to lead a section that was based on sports games that would not occur for the majority of the year. However, I shifted to a more feature-based approach in our multimedia packages, complete with HTML elements, photos and videos. While readership also increases with the multimedia tools used in the story itself, I also created short gifs and videos to promote our packages and magazines on social media.
Outside of El Estoque, I attended a journalism summer camp called Newsroom By the Bay at Stanford University, where I learned more about the power of experimenting with multimedia tools. The lessons learned there furthered my journey in adding more visual elements to my stories, including these photos that I, along with my team, took at a #ClosetheCamps protest in Palo Alto.
Multimedia projects
Man on the street - Throughout the course of the year, I created several award-winning man on the street style audio stories and videos, despite a completely online setting.
I created several multimedia packages during my term as sports editor, despite a completely remote setting with no sports for the majority of the school year.
https://elestoque.org/2021/05/15/uncategorized/acl-injuries/ - In this story, I featured athletes who have faced an ACL injury and created gifs to include a visual explanation of what occurs in this serious injury.
I've also created videos to showcase some outstanding members of our community, including MVHS chemistry teacher Kavita Gupta, who was featured in a National Geographic documentary, and the day-to-day activities of our student body. These videos engage the viewer more effectively than a traditional written feature story both due to the variety in angles and composition as well as the more comprehensive and unfiltered reactions of the interviewees.
As part of the Newsroom By the Bay summer program, I created multimedia pages, covering topics from the history of the Tenderloin District in San Francisco to the Close the Camps protest in Palo Alto against the detention centers along the US border.