Progress Update

So things are still going really well. As discussed in previous posts, I did the interview with Bruce Coville on Monday evening. In order to finish the story, I need to get a total of 6 sources, so Coville gave me the contact info for a bunch of people I could speak with. I've spoken with a few of them over the past couple of days, so I'm up to four sources. I'm hoping to contact two more either tomorrow or Saturday, so that I can write the article on Sunday, and essentially I wouldn't have to do anything for news writing in the final week. I am slightly concerned because I've made efforts to contact my other sources and they haven't returned my messages yet, but it's only been a couple of days, and in a pinch I could probably find some other people to talk to, or call/email Bruce himself and ask him to recommend some other sources. Anyway, I'm in good shape. Six days away from my deadline, and I'm much further along than I thought I would be.

But the real surprise of this week is in regards to my graphics class. First of all, I thought the project I turned in last week sucked, because it took me almost all day on Friday to come up with a decent idea, and then once I had the idea I had to rush through the actual design. So I was feeling pretty pessimistic about it. But then something odd started happening-- some classmates started telling me how much they liked my design, and some others made positive comments about it on the blog where all the students in the class post their projects and discuss them. Apparently, my professor also liked the design. Got it back on Wednesday, and I got an A on it. In a turn of events I would have literally never expected, I'm pulling straight A's in graphic design. And the news gets better:

Our project this week is to design a layout for a feature article for a magazine. They told us how time-consuming this would be, and said that it would be the most difficult project we were assigned in the class. So I actually started on it early (something I didn't do with any of my other projects), and it went really well right off the bat. It certainly is the most complex and time-consuming project we've done so far, but somehow it's also the easiest (in my opinion). I think it's because the other assignments all called for us to create something completely new. There weren't many rules or restrictions, you could more or less do what you wanted, and since I'd never done this kind of stuff before, I had no idea where to start. This project is different because everybody knows what a magazine article is supposed to look like. You're just supposed to make one that looks really good. And so far I think I'm doing that. I'm pretty close to being done with the project already, so tomorrow shouldn't be too stressful, and I think it's going to come out great. I'll probably post it up here tomorrow night so you can all take a look at it.

Oh, one other thing. For this magazine project, we don't have to write the article. We were supposed to pick an article out of an existing magazine, and then just redesign that article (we're also supposed to make up a new title, use different pictures, basically change everything except the subject of the story and the text itself). Since I have recently become a huge fan of Esquire, I chose an article from their August issue (the one with Stephen Colbert on the cover. And, no, that was not a misprint when I said the August issue. The August issue was on shelves around the second week of July. There are things I will never understand about the magazine industry). Anyway, the article is about the guy who killed five people and wounded 16 others in a shooting spree at Northern Illinois University back in February. The article is fantastic, exactly the kind of journalism I could see myself doing someday. It's very long, but well worth your time. Click here to read it.

Okay, that's all for now. I'll probably be back tomorrow night or over the weekend.

-Nick