Marisa Kathleen Whitaker, at your service.

Greetings to the professional journalistic world for taking the time to come to Marisa Whitaker’s blogfolio.

Currently, I’m in Cincinnati getting ready to graduate in April. I’ve solidified my journalism education in magazine writing, photojournalism and copy editing. I intern with UC Magazine as a writer, am helping the Yellowbook magazine get off the ground and work off and on with The News Record in the entertainment, college living, and photojournalism. I also contributed to Verge Magazine (thevergemagazine.org) Autumn semester 2012. (And I’m now using a Nikon D7000.)

I’ve come to realize that I want to write for local publications. I want to know about the city I live in and tell the inhabitants of the cool activities and events going on around their area. I loved working in North Carolina with Rapid River Magazine to get to know the area around Asheville, NC, and I hope my experience with UC Magazine will get me more involved and more knowledgeable about campus and the people who make it go. This is what I want to do for the next publication I work for, and every one after that. Local is in. Loving where you live is in. Big dreams to be the next Annie Lebovitz, Mike Taibbi, or Peter Travers still power who I am today, but when I come home knowing a little bit more about the place I call home (big or little), it feels good. It feels good to call attention to a place, person, or event that others might overlook for the rest of their lives. I’m the one who wrote that article or took those pictures, and now the viewer’s world is a bit wider simply because of me.

Check out these examples. Question what’s unclear, criticize shortcomings, push to do better, sprinkle compliments where compliments are due, and never, ever forget a journalistic mind.