Broadcast Journalism

Multimedia is often an uncomfortable medium for many journalists at my school who are not in our designated broadcast program. Simply writing a story and taking a photo tends to feel more familiar and accessible. However, I’ve found that one of the most rewarding aspects of news writing is discovering new and creative ways to deliver information. Experimenting with videos, podcasts, timelines, and other innovative formats offers valuable opportunities to engage audiences in ways traditional reporting cannot. This year, I've encouraged our staff to incorporate video content into our social media coverage. We’ve found that our audience responds more positively and deeply engages when posts feature dynamic footage or human-centered visuals.

Podcast Content

Podcasting first became an experiment in my sophomore year of Beginning Journalism, when a dual-enrollment multimedia project led me to produce a podcast on the unvoiced struggles of transfer students. The following year, I helped relaunch The Paly Voice’s podcast, TONE, developing a consistent episode structure to bring clarity and cohesion to each installment. In those early recordings, however, I focused so intently on precision in writing that when I actually recorded, my delivery was a little flat. Over time, as my confidence as a writer strengthened, my voice behind the microphone grew more natural. I recorded an episode my senior year that reflects growth in production quality.

Multimedia Script and Written Version

This is a script for my Beginning Journalism multimedia project.

Multimedia+Project_mixdown.wav

Audio recording of Beginning Journalism project.

TONE

This is an example of a TONE segment that I helped three reporters draft for an episode.

TONE episode from my junior year.

TONE episode from my senior year.

I worked with the EIC of KPLY Paly Radio to publish audio content on our website. This collaboration not only expanded our content offerings but also boosted traffic and engagement, benefiting the visibility and audience reach of both platforms.

KPLY Paly RadioPalo Alto High School's online radio station. Tune in for amazing audio content! Executive Producer: Shreyas Shashi

Video Content

The Palo Alto Unified School District recently separated from its superintendent following a series of contentious school board meetings and other long-term contributing factors. The The Paly Voice has extensively covered ongoing developments involving the board, rising tensions surrounding teachers’ contracts, and student responses to these issues. Instead of producing a traditional written verbatim, I chose to create a video verbatim. Working with one of the publication’s managing editors, I gathered student perspectives on the qualities they would like to see in a new superintendent.

After being named California Journalist of the Year, I was invited to an interview by Paly's broadcast journalism program, InFocus. They asked me about why I chose web journalism, its significance and the responsibility with this kind of journalism, and my thoughts on the award. While the official InFocus segment hasn’t been edited or has aired yet, I have the full interview recording.

IMG_3687.MOV

As an editor and reporter, I have stressed the importance of video content to increase readership and make our content more appealing. As the news editor my sophomore year and part of junior year, I used video content in a variety of Instagram posts and assisted other staff members in publishing their own video content.

Dance team wins nationals

For this story, I assisted two reporters with publishing a video onto our website. Having inserted video content into a few of my multimedia timelines, I was familiar with using Flickr to post video content on our WordPress website. I worked with the two of them to edit and insert the video before publishing.

I learned quickly that video content on Instagram, even if short and simple, performs much better than a static photo of the same thing. When posting the stories I have covered on Instagram, there are multiple stories where I prioritized filming videos. This approach increased the like-count and number of views compared to photographed posts.