Tag Archives: Radio

Monday blues is a common syndrome after enjoying the long weekend. Today’s MA Journalism (International) class turned the usual rut into a pleasure.

As part of the Online Journalism class, we had to write a profile about someone from our comfort zone … one of our classmates. The morning session involved learning about the basics of interviewing and writing profiles.

The afternoon session was the assignment of writing the profile. We swooped across class to find a friend to profile. Someone whom we barely knew or hardly ever spoke to since the last two months would now become friends we had to write about.

The task

We had to write profiles about one another and take an “informative” profile picture. Though we worked in pairs, it was surprising to see students open up to one another and describe their entire life in 20 minutes. The enthusiasm was very evident. The interview time was extremely chaotic with the newsroom doubling up as a studio where students were posing for the profile picture. We had one hour to write the profile in 400 words, upload it onto our group news blogs and print it for assessment.

It was indeed a pleasure to interview Mladen Petkov, a former Bulgarian military man and now a radio jockey. After the long conversation with Mladen, it was difficult to describe the interesting young man in just 400 words.

At 4.29 pm, there was a scramble at the printers to print the profile to submit for assessment. At the end of the day, we were all tired. What a day!!!

The aftermath …

I got home from class and visited the four news blogs. I read all the profiles that were uploaded to the news blogs and was surprised to know that all my classmates had very interesting stories behind them. I got great insights into their lives. What seemed to be a dull and boring day turned out to be very fruitful.