Reporting
and Writing
Within two weeks of joining journalism, I had my first experience with writing and publishing a story on our website, and ever since then, I've enjoyed uplifting unheard voices and unique perspectives in our website, newspaper, and magazine. I feel like every time I write a story, there is one aspect of it better than the last. I love using my previous articles and taking note of edits that were made, so I can avoid edits in the future. In this section I share some of my reporting and writing work where you can see this process in action.
Use the menu to the right or scroll down to navigate through my reporting and writing examples. Click on the images or galleries to enlarge.
News
When the COVID-19 vaccine made its way to Maui, I talked to our teachers about their experiences with getting the doses. With less than 3% of our island's population vaccinated, many people had questions about the vaccination process.
Covering our school's decision to return to in-person learning was crucial. Many people had questions about how our hybrid schedule was working, especially since the Department of Education has not allowed in-person learning in public schools.
This door decorating contest article captured student life in our on-campus community, and this is an example of a story that is important to our readers, but not necessarily something that would be covered by The Maui News. Covering this activity was helpful and meaningful to the Hawaiian language movement since this is a school for Hawaiian students.
This story was supposed to be a sidebar, but the deeper I delved into the topic, the longer it got. It accompanied the main story about new tiki wood carvings donated to our library and a column about a retired security guard who had donated the tikis. The connections I discovered between the three stories fascinated me, and I, as a student journalist, saw how I can foster connections in the community through my reporting.
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I wrote this in the last quarter of the last school year, a time that was extremely hectic and confusing. COVID-19 was new, and the changes our school had to make were quickly executed. I was happy to be able to shed light on all the new procedures and ease people's worries. Staff and students were glad that they had a place to express their feelings in the newspaper survey that we circulated to tell the story.
Major changes were made to the structure of our school last year, and reporting about the new leader of these changes made for a great story. Many were concerned about a foreigner leading a Hawaiian school; however, I was able to capture our new administrator's experience and positive perspective, which made people feel more at ease when welcoming him.
Features
This article is meaningful because I was able to show others a different side of a student who isn't very outspoken. He is a big part of the art program at our school, but not many people know about him, so I thought it was important to tell his story. It was also meaningful to him because no one had ever covered him before or broadcast his art, so he was very appreciative of this article.
I took on one of the main stories, Maui Master, in our magazine called Nā Koa, and this was significant to me because I got to tell the story of an influential 'ukulele teacher. I gathered different perspectives from people who had been impacted by Rama Camarillo, and broadening my pool of sources is something I've been working on, so I was glad to be able to reach so many important people in the music world for this article. After this story got published, I received a lot of positive feedback from friends and family of Rama Camarillo, who expressed how meaningful this story is to them and the local music industry.
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In hopes of finding the perfect angle---our lesson in journalism that week---I wrote this story about our new band teacher, Ms. Eimen. This story is meaningful because of how vulnerable she made herself in the interview---she trusted me to tell others about her life's story. Even when talking about hardship, I couldn't help but notice her constant positivity and optimism, which I did my best to convey in this story.
Opinion
In this advice column I did with another staffer, we decided to write in a pidgin language---specialized vocabulary and sentence structure used by Hawaiʻi locals. We wanted to give advice in this way because it's so typical to hear this kind of "tough love" growing up here. This advice column was fun but also connected us better to our readers.
In these two editor's notes, I addressed our magazine audience directly. I was able to explain the inner workings of our publication and reflect on our experiences with the process of creating it. These pieces are meaningful to me because I could finally connect to the readers in my own voice.
Click on the gallery and use the left and right arrows to scroll through the examples.