About Shannon Brown

BA (Hons) Journalism

Work Experience Day 4

This day was a blog post on International Women’s Day.

Laura emailed around saying they’d gotten the Marjon blog up and running and they were looking for contributions, and specifically one on international women’s day.

Since I went to the day, I offered to write this post, though I mentioned I didn’t have any pictures so they provided them.

Because I’ve written a lot of blog posts, this was probably the easiest thing I’ve done for marketing. I think the hardest part was trying to stay accurate, since I wrote it over a week after the event. Also, as I mentioned before, there was a Labour candidate there and I’m still not sure how that works with making stuff for Marjon but I felt like it was important so I included it.

The difference between this piece and some of the others piece I’ve done for them, is that I can directly see the shares and likes and views for this post, so can better see how the audience responded to it. It’s been shared around on Facebook and Twitter by the speakers who were involved in the day, but the video and snapchats have gotten a better response. I think covering all bases makes sense, but ultimately, I think people are more likely to watch videos because they don’t take so long, they’re easy and more entertaining. This is frustrating though, because that’s not what I want to do, but it seems  to be the way everything headed… The next blog post I do for them (either one about moving off campus, or mental health in deadline season) I am going to try including a video and see how that one goes.

 

Blog post for reference: http://sites.marjon.ac.uk/marketing1/2018/03/06/reflections-on-the-women-in-leadership-conference/

Work Experience Day 3

For this day of experience, I once again ran the Marjon university’s Snapchat account for the day. It was International Women’s Day, and the university hosted a conference full of speakers and discussions. As well as attending, I took pictures of speakers throughout the day with captions, and I also did short video snippets of various talks.

To avoid interrupting  the speakers, I sat right in the middle of the room to get a good camera shot. This was also so I could see everything without having to move or get up and walk around. This would give the students viewing the snaps a better view.
Because of the audience – Marketing have explained that the main audience of the Snapchat is mainly current students – I tried to keep the captions relevant and interesting, using some of the filters Snapchat offers and coloured writing instead of black. Because it is student centred, tried to keep it informal. My usual writing style is naturally very informal anyway, so this was easy.

There was a part of the day where a political candidate for the Labour party came in to talk about women in politics. I was nervous when putting this on Snapchat, because I was aware that I was running an official account for the university and you have to be careful about things like that. Though, since there was no one from another party there, I had to put it up anyway. I wouldn’t say it affected how I described her talk, I was just aware that it was something I probably should be careful of.

While I did upload to the Snapchat account for the day, in terms of what I got out of it, there wasn’t much. The talks throughout the day distracted me a bit, so the social media stuff was more of an afterthought, something I was doing because I was already there. Looking back, I could have gotten a quick one minute interview with some of the speakers, or asked them to pose for photos or something extra, to make the Snapchat more interesting, but also to use other skills that aren’t just taking photos on an iPod.

Word Experience Day 2

Friday 26th Jan

For the marjon media people, I was asked to film and edit Lee Ridley’s keynote at the Speech and Language Therapy conference. For this I booked out a video camera and rifle mic from Rob, since I figured I’d be filming from the back of the drama theatre.

Filming isn’t something I’m particularly brilliant at, but I didn’t have to get b-roll or music or sound effects or anything like that, really, just make sure Lee was in shot for the whole thing, and that the sound was good, so I just kept my headphones in the whole time and listened through them to make sure the levels were okay.

Part of the brief was to edit the video, so on Monday I edited together a video for the Marjon Facebook page, about 2 and a half minutes long featuring the start of the keynote because I thought that was the part most relevant for Facebook; I think Laura wanted to put the full video up on Youtube so I saw the Facebook video as a snippet into a 45 minute video.

Laura emailed me back saying everything was fine, but could I edit out the introduction and put in some text instead, which would cut the video down to two minutes, so I re edited and included a text part.

The video on Facebook has 1.5k views, so that’s pretty exciting!

I felt pretty comfortable doing this piece, because it didn’t involve talking to people, which is what I tend to struggle with. Though, like I said, I don’t feel especially confident filming, it was a fairly simple video to make, and the edit was more important than the actual shots, and I do feel confident in my editing. Laura’s change was a good call, and I had considered taking out the intro part, but wanted to provide some context. I wouldn’t have thought to include text, however, if Laura hadn’t mentioned it.

Having a brief to work to makes things slightly easier, I think, because I know exactly what I need to include and what marketing was looking for. Like with the Eli interview, there were some suggested topics to ask him about, which made questioning easier, but I was also free to ask him about other interesting things as well.

 

Work Experience – Day One

Yesterday I produced content for Marjon’s snapchat account, according to a brief set by Laura Bell.

Since the Student Union Presidential positions are opening up in a few days, Laura asked me yo interview the president about the role, to create interest and clear up some questions about the roles.

About 1pm I went to interview Eli, taking a picture and writing that there would be an interview coming up, and followed with around 5 minutes of questions and answering. Because it was Snapchat, which Laura requested because most of the followers are current students, I don’t have any clips of the questions I asked, or his answers, and they’ve since been deleted because of the whole 24 hour thing.

I think it went well, Eli answered the questions really well and I tried to throw in some questions about him so the interview was a bit more interesting. This was a good start to producing media for Marjon, but because of the nature of the content, it’s difficult to get feedback on how I did. Hopefully the next thing I make for them – planning to do a piece on the new societies being started here – will be easier to assess.

JAMD04 – Lecture 7

Yesterday we wrote fake cover letters and talked about our mock interviews in December.

The interviews I’ve had before have all pretty much gone the same way – me fumbling to respond in coherent English to simple questions – and somehow I currently have a job, so who knows how that happened.

I was really pleased with how my cover letter turned out; I thought it was professional enough but there was still some personality there so it hopefully wasn’t boring. Rob said it was good, but to ease back on the personal stuff a bit, which I won’t disagree with – there is a line and I might have crossed it. Everyone makes such a big deal about standing out, and I think that’s a huge part of getting a job, but maybe not giving a potential employer my entire life history is a good idea.

Surprisingly though, I found it wasn’t difficult to find positive things to write on it. It’s easier in writing though, to a nameless, faceless person, whereas in an interview I still don’t want to sound arrogant, even though that kind of is the point to an interview. You’re both there to have a conversation about how great you are. I think all of the quizzes helped, because they were much more positive than I thought. There was also one entirely dedicated to strengths, which helped me write the cover letter, and gave me a nice ego boost at the same time.

JAMDO4 – Lectures 5&6

Since I forgot to do last week’s session I’ll combine it with this weeks.

Last week, Ross Reid, a local sports journalist came in to talk about what it’s like living as a freelancer, which was fascinating. It is something I have considered, and it was good to get an inside look at what it’s like.
On top of the discussion about not being afraid to put work out, and the speed interview practise we did in preparation for this week, the main thing I took away was that it’s more work than it looks to freelance. Ross said he started after working as a journalist for a while, so he had built up contacts already, which seemed to make it easier for him. I think it would be really difficult to come to it as a job straight after university, not knowing anyone in the industry, or how it works.

As I am not the best socially, either, working for someone would out me give me a reason to talk to a lot of people I might not get to otherwise.

This week, we all went to a networking event at the Theatre Royal; we listened to a panel talk about what it was like getting into their industry, then had the chance to ask them questions afterwards.

I was dreading it, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d been building it up to be. The panellists were interesting people, with a lot of stories to tell and advice to give. They were mainly from the broadcasting side of things, though, or screenwriters, and not necessarily relevant to what I want to do, though I tried to take as much as I could from it, asking questions and making notes.

Afterwards, I was lucky enough to go to the BBC studio for a potential job there. While I don’t love broadcasting, I do like radio, and I’m not terrible at it, like I am with film, so I think it would be a good opportunity to properly see if it’s something I want to do in the future.

At this point, it might be best for me to stop thinking about what I love doing, what I enjoy the most, because it will always be writing in some format. I figure it would be better to look into doing other things, especially at uni where we’re not limited to one area, and we have to use other mediums anyway.

 

JAMD04 – Lecture 3

This lecture, we were creating CVs. And not like our original CVs, that have to all look pretty much identical and contain all the same information with slightly different GCSE grades, but personal CVS.

Because journalism is a pretty creative industry, I wanted to make a creative CV, something that kind of says what kind of person I am and also showing I know how to use InDesign past a 20 minute crash course.
Being me, I created my CV to look like a Wild West Wanted poster. It’s not finished, as I need a professional-ish headshot to go in the centre, and need to change the background colour, but the info is down, and the design is mostly complete too.
I chose this design because it will definitely stand out, it’s a bit weird, and hopefully they’ll know I’m a bit different because of it.

Shannon Brown CV unfinished-wmqbh2

JAMD04 – Lecture 4

This week, I took some online quizzes on the Marjon Futures site.

The most interesting one was the Temperament quiz – essentially a version of the MBTI test, which I’ve done many times already. I’ve always had the same answer when doing it before – INFJ – so I wasn’t expecting anything new on this one, but it told me I was an INFP – the only difference being a preference for spontaneity and going with the flow. Depending on how much these personality quizzes are to be believed, that might explain why I’m struggling to get organised and complete tasks on time.

Out of the quizzes I took, they were mostly different answers to what I expected. The Stress Management one, for example, would I cope well with stress “most of the time,” and I don’t really agree with that. A healthy management would be talking to people, working through things,  allowing time for breaks. I tend to ignore stressful things until it gets too much then blitz through and produce something a little bit half-assed.

On writing that, I realise I definitely to start handling that a bit better.

 

 

JaMD04 – Lecture 2

We created an online portfolio full of the stuff we created over the past year, and beyond. Mine includes links to my personal blog, and some of the video and audio packages from last year.

https://shannongracebrown.wordpress.com/portfolio/

It isn’t completely finished, because there are some more things I would like to add – the videos me and Clara made for the uni for election season, and the video I edited for the chaplaincy last summer – but there’s a wide selection of skills shown on the portfolio, which I think is better than tailoring it specifically to what I want to do after uni.

I then spoke to Mike about what kind of placement I was interested in; I still have no idea.

My strongest skill is writing, and it’s what I enjoy doing most, so I’d like to go into written journalism, though, right now, I’m not fussy about whether online or in print – the print industry is dying so I would probably write for online magazines or news sites. Though i said I don’t want to do news and I stand by that – I think I’ve done too much creative writing to be a good news writer.

 

JaMD04 – Lecture 1

This module covers all things relating to placement and work experience, as well as generally making myself more employable in general. At the moment, the placement side of things feels very far off, though I know I would like to do a variety of things, to better understand what I would like to do after finishing third year.

Since the 20 days total can be spread out over the year, I would like to have found some kind of work experience by reading week, which is about a month away, even if I haven’t started it then. Just having my foot in the door somewhere would be better for my mentality than having no idea and no goal in mind.

Over tonight and tomorrow, I plan to look online at places that offer work experience – Plymouth Herald for certain, and Plymouth Heart possibly as well – and see how to apply, as well as ask Mike and Sarah about other opportunities, like the potential to shadow a freelancer for a day, or something of that nature, because I’m not sure what I would like to go into.
I know I like doing radio work, particularly the producing side of things, but I find it easier to keep my voice in written media, whether online or in print styles, and I prefer that about it.

In today’s lecture, we looked at personality tests; some places of work still use them as a way of gauging whether they think people would be suitable to work there. I don’t know how accurate they can be for picking and choosing people for jobs, because I think there are many more external factors that affect a person. Four letters cannot possibly predict how a person would react to every possible scenario, especially because there’s so much variation between the types.

I do, however, think they are a fairly accurate way of looking at personality, so long as they are not seen as set in stone and any deviations from the classification are not seen as some giant personality change.

The test I am most familiar with is the Myers-Briggs test, which I’ve done a lot and it comes up the same every time. My type on this test is INFJ, which is known as the “advocate.”

People with the same type include Nelson Mandela, Nicole Kidman and Wilson from House M.D. Some of the strengths of this type include being creative, insightful and altruistic, while the weaknesses include being incredibly private, sensitive and can burn out easily. Funnily enough, journalist and careers in the media are listed as suitable careers for an INFJ, so, if this is accurate, I’m glad I’m in the right place.

While I stand by what I said before, in that I don’t think it’s Gospel, and I definitely see more weaknesses in myself than those listed on this website, I think the part about having an ingrained sense of morality and idealism is true, and that’s what I want to bring into my work as a journalist.
In the end, I want to report on social justice, and inequality between social groups. Eventually, I’ll know how the best way to go about this, and how to get there.