PDX Media Day: Million Dollar Questions
By Cate Bikales
At PDX Media Day on Friday, March 8th, I visited many different workshops. Each one taught me a variety of things, including how to conduct interviews, take amazing photos and write sports articles. One that stood out to me was the third session I visited. I attended the workshop to improve my interview skills, as this is not one of my strong suits in the field, and I feel that it really helped me understand how to deal with different people. This session was called Million Dollar Questions, and it was taught by Jessica Young.
Young lives in Escondido, California and has been teaching at Orange Glen High School for ten years. She teaches yearbook, journalism and photography, coaches volleyball, and coordinates California State University teachers in training. She is best known in the field of journalism, where she has been recognized as a Master Journalism Educator by KSU and the Journalism Education Association. Additionally, Young teaches workshops around the country, including the one I visited at PDX Media Day. As a side job, Young is a writer for Locale Magazine in San Diego, does freelance photography and owns a bake shop called Bake Me Happy.
Million Dollar Questions provided me with a lot of helpful information and was also very entertaining. Young’s quirky but bright personality turned a slideshow that may have been boring into a funny, eye-catching slideshow that had people laughing throughout the entirety of the presentation. In the workshop, we learned about how different people respond differently to certain questions asked. We learned how to act around certain people. For example, around a “hostile but knowledgeable” person you must be the bigger person, avoid close-ended questions, push back (gently!), act maturely, press for details and not back down, whereas around a “traumatized” person you must show empathy, use silence, be patient, ask open-ended questions, be respectful but persistent and ask for details. Every person responds in their own way, and you must figure out, through practice, how to deal with each one of them. This presentation taught me a lot and was presented in a way that kept me smiling throughout the session.
I didn't go to this one and you made it sound super fun!!
ReplyDeleteYou described it perfectly andI felt as if I were there. Whoops, I actually was! Overall this is a really good piece.
ReplyDeleteGreat description! It helped to visualize what it was like to be there!
ReplyDelete