Tuesday, March 31, 2009

A Day in the Life

Continuing with my snowboarding beat, I recently wrote a "Day in the Life" story about Winter Park Resort in Colorado. For those of you that have never skied WP, it's a sweet resort. Divided into two separate parks, Winter Park and Mary Jane, the resort stretches across four peaks. Both sides of the mountain, affectionately known as the Park side and the Jane side, offer great skiing and riding. The Jane side is known for it's bumps however, so there are noticeably fewer snowboarders going down that side. If you can find your way around the bumps though, there's a lot of great terrain waiting to be torn up. 

I spent Saturday, Feb. 28 at Winter Park meeting new people, observing, taking notes and of course, I couldn't resist doing a little riding of my own. It was a great day to be in the mountains -a fresh dusting of powder and sunshine all day. That weekend also happened to be the 34th annual Wells Fargo Cup. I watched a few pro-am races and met a few cool people. 

I was surprised to realize how much I don't notice on a normal day of snowboarding. When I was there for the specific purpose of observing, I noticed so many details that I had looked past before. It was a great day. 

Thursday, March 12, 2009

A Snowboarder Profile

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently wrote a profile on snowboarder Nate Giska for my JMC 410 class, Advanced News and Feature Writing. I had a lot of fun writing this story, I love to learn new things about snowboarding and meet cool people. 

Nate is such an impressive guy, the hardest part about writing this story was trying to fit in everything he's done into a tight space. Through talking to Nate and researching I learned a lot about him. Nate was born in Indiana and learned to snowboard there in a small man made snow park. He developed his own line of snowboarding gear and other active wear when he was only 16. He moved to Colorado to attend the University of Northern Colorado and to be closer to real mountains. When he got here though, he was disappointed by the lack of snowboarding involvement, so he started Northern Colorado Riders, which is now one of the most active clubs on campus. A junior Business Management major, Nate is putting his education to work even before graduating and opening up Blacklist Boardshop, a skate/snowboard shop right here in Greeley, CO. 

I learned a lot about writing and rewriting from doing this assignment. I found that what I write the first time around is good, but is likely to change before I'm finished. I also learned that while I may write an interesting story, I definitely need to work on my preparation and review some AP style. I think that what I learned in writing this profile will be helpful in future stories and assignments, and I'm grateful to have met Nate. 

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

So far in JMC 410...

So far in my Advanced News and Feature Writing class (JMC 410) we have completed two articles. The first assignment was to write a profile story on someone relevant to our beat. Covering a snowboarding beat, I chose to write mine on Nate Giska, a UNC student, snowboarder, and entrepreneur. Nate is an awesome guy who has done some amazing things already in his life. 

The second assignment was to write a day in the life article, again, about something in our beat. I wrote mine about a day in the life at Winter Park. Even though I had been to Winter Park dozens of times, I noticed that when I was there specifically to observe the people and the park, I noticed so much more. A day in Winter Park takes you to a different world...