Writing for The Dateline, the University of Houston-Downtown-affiliated newspaper, has been an incredible experience. Being granted the freedom to report and write about events and personal interests has been a breath of fresh air.
As an English major at the University of Houston-Downtown, writing usually comes in the form of strict academic expectations and format. Admittedly, breaking free from the academic format and transitioning to the Associated Press journalistic style was a challenge. It’s almost as if I needed to loosen up a bit and just have fun with my writing.
Writing for The Dateline became fun when the reports and articles became personal interests and passions of mine. My first contribution to The Dateline came in issue two, where I wrote about a short list of underrated movies. Ironically, my interest in and passion for writing originally stemmed from my love of film as a child. While the visual and audio aspects of film were fun and captivating, the foundation of my love for writing and storytelling came from realizing that most films are adapted from novels.
In the next issue, I wrote an article about the evolution of album covers. This was fun because some of my personal favorite artists and albums were covered in the article. And who doesn’t love great visual art to match great music? While albums are often discussed and reviewed for their audio quality and enjoyability, discussing the visual art was a breath of fresh air.
My next article was about Seasonal Affective Disorder. Because of my personal experience with changing moods during seasonal shifts, the opportunity to shed light on this reality presented itself. Realizing that other University of Houston-Downtown students most likely have experienced something similar, it was necessary to offer helpful tips on dealing with it when it occurs. It is extremely fulfilling as a writer to be both informative and helpful!
My next article followed a similar suit. Writing about stress cleaning was both informative and helpful. Because cleaning is how I personally handle stress, other students must surely handle stress similarly.
The next few articles covered more of my interests, both sports at the national and local levels. The history of March Madness article and the Houston Astros Opening Day feature article allowed for sports to be covered a bit more for The Dateline. These sports articles were special for me as a writer because of their implications for a full-circle moment. My journalistic interests began in middle school, when my article about the basketball team was published in the school newspaper. Almost two decades later, a few of my sports articles were in the University’s online newspaper.
It goes without saying that writing and reporting for UHD’s newspaper has been a pleasure and a large personal accomplishment. My hope is to have not only been informative and helpful to readers through my articles, but also entertaining and fun. Thank you to all the readers throughout the semester, and thank you to The Dateline for the honor of writing for them!
