The editorial board working hard in the newsroom / Photo courtesy of Cassidey Kavathas
BY KELSEY PURCELL, FEATURES EDITOR
I can’t believe my time as features editor as come to an end. It’s been a great semester. I’m so glad that I decided to start writing for the BV at the beginning of my freshmen year. I’ve learned a lot and made great connections through the newspaper.
I need to thank Emilie Weinbeck, former features editor, for asking me to join the editorial staff. She was a great InDesign teacher and amazing to work with.
I’d also like to thank Cassidey Kavathas, editor in chief, and Nathan Soloman, managing editor, for their stellar leadership. They were always on top of story ideas and getting edits in on time, which I appreciated.
The rest of the editorial board has been incredible. Hadley, Tucker, Meghan, David, Will and Jonny, thank you for helping me out whenever I had any AP Style questions. It was great working with all of you in the newsroom.
Dr. Carol McNall is a wonderful advisor. She gave excellent feedback and helped us catch mistakes. Another big thank you goes to Dr. Denny Wilkins. Thank you for telling us to play with the page layout and to take more photographs. I think the paper has improved from these suggestions.
This year the features section has significantly changed from what it was during my first two years of writing. I am happy to have helped the features section make a transition from stories about pop culture to stories about the community.
Personally, I’ve had more fun writing community oriented stories. I like interviewing people and hearing their stories. The features section is a great way to showcase community members and local events. These stories are more interesting than recaps of television shows or music reviews, which I was used to writing when I first joined the paper. There is more purpose and personality in the section now.
Through student, faculty and staff features we get to share people’s stories. With club corners we get to spread awareness of upcoming events and work that these clubs are doing.
Student’s who I’ve written about have messaged me saying to me that so many people stopped them and said they read the article about them in the paper. It feels good to know that people are reading our stories and they are making an impact.
A huge thank you to Elizabeth Egan, features assignment editor, for helping me come up with headlines, designing the page layout and uploading stories to the website each week. I can’t wait to see what she accomplished as features editor next semester.
I’m so excited for Claire Fisher to become part of the editorial board as the features assignment editor. She has been extremely dedicated to writing for the paper.
To the features writers, Elizabeth, Marnique, Claire and Emily thank you so much for your hard work this semester. Although it was a big transition from writing stories about pop culture to writing community based stories, you did an amazing job.
My final semester of college won’t feel complete without writing for the BV. So don’t be too surprised if you still see articles from me here and there. It’s been so much fun. I’m so thankful for the opportunity to write and edit for an amazing student run newspaper.
purcelkr20@bonaventure.edu
