This article was featured in our Journalism Issue.
Mulitimedia journalist Eunice Onwona, 25, lets us take a walk in her shoes as a journalist at Africa Rizing in Accra, Ghana.
From week to week, no one day was the same. Depending on the type of story and the medium, I could work on a piece in as little as four days to as much as three weeks. That’s part of what I enjoy about what I do. There’s so much flexibility and space for creative freedom, learning, and of course surprises (from technical errors to switching up your story slant last minute). The latter isn’t always exactly comfortable to deal with in the moment but it teaches you over and over, the invaluable lesson of improvising and getting back up on your feet when you’ve been knocked down.
My Mondays were filled with a little bit of everything: researching story ideas, writing articles, and editing them (more on that later).
Most of my Tuesdays consisted of rigorous edits and preparing my content for the Managing Editor to review and publish later during the week. Once my supervisor reviewed the draft, it could be returned to me for further edits several times.
Editing included reviewing grammar and spelling, fact checking, verifying quotes from interviews, getting rid of the ‘fluff’, citing links and references, editing audio, photos or video packages, and ensuring that the content adhered to the voice of our publication.
Wednesdays were normally my longer days. The first half of my day would sometimes include tasks such as transcribing audio from previous interviews or writing the story. This is the exciting part where all your work comes together. I’d spend the second half of the day drafting or reviewing ideas and talking points to present at our evening meeting. In the evenings, I would have a video call with my team based in DC to share updates, as well as pitch story ideas, editorial themes, and social media activity/campaigns for the week. For this reason, I usually didn’t schedule interviews for that day.
Starting Thursday, I could be doing the preliminary work for a new story. That would include researching story ideas (through meeting with potential story subjects and experts, researching online, etc.) booking interviews, shooting video footage, and taking pictures.
On some Fridays, I was tasked with curating our daily newsletter which went out to our subscribers. This often meant an early morning and perhaps a late Thursday night spent monitoring breaking news online and trends on social media that could be potentially included in the newsletter. The newsletters featured current events, news in civic technology, entrepreneurship, business development and social good, news on arts, culture & music, links to original content on our website and links to upcoming events that our audience may be interested in.
While some Saturdays were extremely busy and filled with lots of running around and lots of work, I made sure to spare some time for rest and rejuvenation.
On Sundays, I coordinated with our Social Media Editor to post on our platforms and promote the week’s content, encouraging our followers to get their fill of #SundayReads.
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