When I had my interview for my internship back in late June, one thing I was asked about was my writing skills and capacity. I decided to be honest and I told my supervisor that writing wasn’t exactly my strong point, but it was something I wanted to improve on and get more experience doing. I was holding my breath at this point of my interview because being transparent and honest during an interview can either go in your favour or work against you.

Obviously, I got lucky this time around, but there were interviews I had around the same time as Curtin Sport & Recreation where my honesty worked against me and I never heard back – which just reminded me of the all too familiar, ‘we want a (cheap) grad student but you must have at least two years experience in an industry you entered five minutes ago’.

Anyway, back to my point of this post, I have started to do more writing practice and have even had a some of my writing content published on the Curtin staff newsletter, Curtin Weekly. Bridget and Veronica – make sure to have a read of content under Staff Benefits & Discounts and ‘Save the date for our Zumba Party at Curtin Stadium’ in Events (which is a free event for everyone at Curtin Stadium on Saturday 12/09 @ 10:35am… shameless plug). Written by yours truly!

Before I got stuck into writing news items for this newsletter, I was asked to create a schedule for August and September and to reach out to other departments within Curtin Sport & Recreation to fetch ideas on what can be newsworthy. Transmedia Storytelling came to mind straight away. I vaguely remember a module or exercise during this unit where we discussed what was newsworthy and I was able to reflect on those discussions when determining what was newsworthy to Curtin Stadium and Curtin University. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t written some notes in my notepad to refer to when writing up content that will be deemed newsworthy… bit rusty.

Since Curtin Weekly isn’t a newsletter that’s controlled and monitored by Curtin Sport & Recreation, we have no control on what makes it to Curtin Weekly and what doesn’t. Due to this, I have had be creative and innovative in writing titles, excerpts, using images and putting together the main texts to ensure that we have the greatest chance of getting content posted each week. It is all very much trial and error at the moment, eventually I will get a good idea on what the Curtin Weekly team likes so our items can be placed closer to the top of the newsletter. Below are some photos of what I have posted – unfortunately I can’t post the links as you wouldn’t have access to the staff portal. Currently I have around five items scheduled to be put into Curtin Weekly over the remaining weeks of my internship, so keep an eye out Veronica and Bridget!

Zumba Party @ Curtin Stadium

Carnaby Kids School Holiday Program Registrations

During this process I was also assigned to write news items for the website and begin developing a newsletter for Curtin Stadium. I was then introduced to ActiveCampaign and Campaign Monitor. These platforms are used by Curtin University when developing newsletters. I am still doing some work on the newsletter and hoping it’ll get released soon. Have a look at news items I have written here!

Have you guys had to use skills from Transmedia Storytelling yet?

Till next time,

Shelbs