The week that was
After leaving the Philadelphia Public School Notebook (post coming soon, I promise) I began interning at the Philadelphia Weekly. Last Friday, I had the chance of covering a anti-violence rally for the Philadelphia Weekly to post on their website. I had just left the weekly an hour or so before, had heard about the rally the day before, and was very excited that the editor of the weekly asked if I would be interested in covering the event.
The rally had spurred from two shootings that had taken place that week. The second shooting that happened, last Wednesday, left eight bullets entering the home of one of my co-workers , Ms. Yvonne, damaging her walls and nearly striking her 5 year old daughter.
For the web article my initial plan was to get an account of Ms. Yvonne’s day leading up to when she arrived home from attending Project HOME’s 20th anniversary celebration, to when the bullets began firing. I was unsuccessful in talking to her first, a journalist from either the Inquirer or some other publication beat me to it.
Though after the rally was over Ms. Yvonne wanted to be left alone and have some time with her family, after the ordeal who could blame her. I had tried calling her over the weekend but still was unable to talk to her, she was either asleep or just didn’t feel like talking at the moment. I was really feeling the pressure of getting the piece done, not only to meet the word count (600-800 words) but to make it something that the reader could get into, even if it was just a short coverage.
That Sunday I worked all that on the article, visiting the Project HOME website for info on Rowan Homes where the rally took place, to calling the co-executive of Project HOME and community leader, Helen Brown. From the lenght it doesn’t seem like it was a lot to be written, but it took time, and I wanted this article to be near perfect.
At around or near 9 p.m. the article was finished and sent off to the weekly, that Monday I received a call from their web editor, and later on in the day it went up. Perhaps not so much of an exciting process towards getting an article done, but its a great feelinig having people actually read your work, from a wider audience than that of the NPM I should say.
I am working on another peice for the weekly, its proving a little harder than anything I had worked on previously…
Check out the link in the News section of the site.










“but its a great feelinig having people actually read your work, from a wider audience”
Awesome! I’m looking forward to what these new challenges will produce. You definitely must be feeling that high of getting it done, then getting it out. Great article!
It totally felt great having that article done, I felt as if I was a real journalist. And just having more of a mixed audience than when I wrote for the NPM reading this felt great.