Photo courtesy of sneakerfiles.com: https://www.sneakerfiles.com/air-jordan-11-gamma-blue-2025/
What does a pair of shoes have to do with digital media and journalism?!! Stick with me through this story, and I’ll tell you. For my second beat story, I wanted to focus on digital media journalism. Have you ever wanted to report the news in some capacity? Or tell a story? While we might not have physical newspapers anymore, surfing the web and reading news articles on a website is today’s newspaper.
Hands-on Experience
One of the ways that you can get hands-on experience in the form of journalism is to write a story to be published here on Commodore Waves, which is the school’s official website. Doing this gives you hands-on experience having to find a story, gather sources, write and publish the story. For this article too, we learned how to put the layout together and view the finished product before publishing. This is where the shoes come in. I’m a huge sneaker guy; I really like sneakers and have a small collection. Using the shoe was a way to get your attention for this article. When you’re a student, and you’re going through some of these courses, having these tools available really can give you a working knowledge of what it would be like to do it professionally.
Learning From A Former Student
For context, I decided to hit up my professor, Daniela Oestreich, who as an instructor still contributes to the Commodore Waves after doing it as a student. I wanted to know how contributing to it now has changed from when she was a student, and how as a student, it prepared her for the role that she has now. She was kind enough to take some time after class to give insight for this story. The major takeaway that I got from her is that the biggest difference is “the intention of who her writing is going to serve.” As a student (like me), she was trying to learn and build up her portfolio for life after college. Her goal was to be able to propel herself forward. She said that now as an instructor, her goal is “to propel students forward and highlighting student efforts.” Professor O. (as we call her), enjoys writing and remembers what it was like to be a student in this program, so for her, she says that it doesn’t take much effort to do things like that for us. As we closed out our conversation, Professor O. said something that gave me a different level of respect for being a student and hopefully future professional in this career field. She said, “As I have continued to progress through my career…media work is hard to do, because you’re constantly in the background and so there’s no one marketing you because you are marketing others.” She said that she enjoys being in the background for the students at GCSC now.
Tying It All Together
Digital Media Production is not an easy career field, there is a lot to know, and you must be the type of person that enjoys being in the background and likes to make things appear to just work. It’s hard to find a story that might interest people. Hopefully, if you like sneakers and I got your attention with the shoes, you kept reading to see how it all comes together. For this story we incorporated photo elements to help tie everything together. It is digital media after all.
Photo courtesy of Nike.com (stock photo)
Jay Garcia
Student Writer - Spring 2026
Currently, I’m in my third semester at GCSC in the Digital Media AS pathway. As a student writer, I’d say that I’m a rookie, because I haven’t written anything that’s been published. I do think that I’ve done well enough to get pretty good grades on submitted assignments, so at least I can follow instructions! Haha! I like to watch/try to play sports. I grew up playing football. These days, my leisure sports include pickleball, swimming, putt-putt, and taking walks. I do have pets. I have two service dogs, one who is older and is near retirement, and one who is getting out with me more and more. My new service dog is a GSD/Husky mix named Maximus. I will eventually bring him to class with me. I have an older Pitbull/Beagle mix named Phoenix, also. I like to spend a lot of time away from school with friends and family.
