Cheers to the Towerlight…

…on their last issue of the semester. A few highlights worth noting:

• Rachel Fauber did a great job in The Towerlight 101 explaining the paper’s reporting philosophy and goals.

• In Prosper with Priorities, Nick DiMarco reflects on his senior semester. “Life and college are about your priorties, he writes. “I entered college with the mindset that I would make my time at Towson worth it.” He finishes up this semester and will graduate in January, but says he will continue his blog.

• Spring seniors Ashley Rabe and Tyler Waldman also write about their senior years. “To all my fellow seniors and students, use this break wisely,” Tyler writes. “Sleep in. Travel. Catch up on a video game. Read a good book. Take some time off from work and explore.” After all, once you start working, you may not get a five-week winter break this again.

Congrats to Rachel for her hard work leading the Towerlight and to Nick on his graduation. And see you in January, Ashley and Tyler!

Grads with jobs: Jennifer Carter

Jennifer Carter graduated in 2009 and now works as an editorial assistant for Westlaw Business Currents, a Thomson Reuters affiliate.

What’s a typical day like?

Well, the bulk of my time is taken up with finding, editing, writing and publishing news articles; as well as managing the Currents site and building all the links for the articles. I also help compose, format, send out and provide the photos (from Reuters) for the bi-weekly emails, which, in-and-of-itself is a major undertaking. The writing side could be in the form of blurbs (which is not just for our site but other Reuters cites) to small news pieces to paragraphs which are added to articles. The heart of this publication lies with the analytical articles.

I also just launched the new media side of the Currents site.  We have a Twitter page which is still in its beginning stage but with the marketing campaign and promotions hopefully our base will grow. We are also pushing for Facebook and other social networking sites. We also just started having video segments for Reuters in which our staff speaks on issues, topics and materials which the publication deals with. We may start posting those to the site as well.

Remnants of our first snowfall

Grads with jobs: Krystina Lucido

Krystina Lucido graduated in 2009 and is now an editorial assistant for PressBox. She started interning there in January, 2009, four months before graduation, and slowly transitioned into her job.

“They could not afford to hire me full time, but I was going in 40 hours,” she said. “We agreed on a pay scale that was fair and now allows me to work from home three days a week (which also gives me more time to focus on pursuing my master’s).”

At the PressBox, Krystina blogs and writes about local sports such as college football, pro football and boxing. She’s happy to talk to students, too. Leave a comment and I’ll send you her email address.

What’s a typical day like?

It really depends on which time of the month it is because of our monthly paper deadline. The paper comes out on the 15th of every month, so our “deadline” is usually about three days prior to the 13th (because the printer needs about two days to print and ship the paper).

Those days I am in the office anywhere from 7-10 hours depending on how far behind we are. I am looking over proofs – editing, fact checking, making sure the layout looks right on the page. You would be amazed at the smallest details; no one would probably ever notice if it was off – but we know.

Any other day I am usually updating our Web site with fresh content and linking it around the site. I am the resident Tweet-ess in the office and I try to tweet about anything new that goes up. I edit and fact check all the stories before they go up and I will also send links of stories to people I think might be interested in reading them. I also contribute to our intern blog and I may be starting my own blog on college sports soon.

So in answer to your question … busy!

A sure sign the end of the semester is here

When you see suits and backpacks on campus, you know it’s project-presentation time.