Students win chance to be journalists for a day

Four students will be spending a day working at Cayman Free Press as a result of winning a competition to be a journalist for a day. 

Peter Chamalian, aged 15, Cody Bush, 16, and Lorena Morejon, 15, who are pupils at Triple C, submitted a video entry about the proposed Emerald Sound development in South Sound and the opposition to it, while UCCI computer science student Ivet Ferguson, 17, submitted a written article about the work of the National Gallery. 

“We were happy to offer this competition to students in all three Cayman Islands,” said Cayman Free Press Editor Tammie C. Chisholm. “We believe that if we are going to attract students to careers in journalism, we have to make them aware of the possibilities open to them at Cayman Free Press. 

“We wanted to give the students of the Cayman Islands a chance to see how a real newsroom works and the process behind reporting the news here. The winners will spend a day at the Compass learning how to gather news for a story, how to write it, how to take photographs to accompany the article, how to get the article into the computer system, up to production, on the press an out into the streets.” 

Peter shot and edited the four-and-a-half-minute video, while Cody and Lorena did the interviews and research. The entire project took two and a half weeks. 

The trio take a photography class with art teacher Lynn Husemann, who encouraged them to enter the competition and helped produce their video. 

They decided to tackle the thorny subject of the development in South Sound, which involved a proposal to move part of South Sound Road inland and cut canals and an access channel from the sound, because they felt it was a different approach to other entries. Around the time the competition launched, Cayman was in the grip of a spate of gang-related murders. “We figured everyone else would probably do something on that, so we chose something different,” said Cody. 

Although none of the three expressed a strong interest in becoming journalists, they are interested in videography and photography – elements that play a major part in the world of journalism. Peter hopes to become a videographer and enter the movie editing industry. Cody wants to work with computers, but is also interested in photography. Lorena also wants to continue with photography and would like to be an architect. 

Ivet is currently pursuing an associate degree in computer science. She became interested in the subject matter of her story for the competition – the National Gallery – when she took part in a mentoring programme involving the gallery’s communications and marketing manager, Mona Lisa Tatum-Watler. 

“I thought the work of the National Gallery was very interesting,” she said. Her article looks at the history of the gallery and the work it does in the community.  

All four students will spend a day finding out what it’s like to be a journalist in the Cayman Islands early next year. 

The winners also received Lenovo netbooks from LIME. 

“We are grateful to have teamed up with LIME to make this competition even more attractive to students,” Mrs. Chisholm said. 

To view the winning video and article, click here.