Congrats Fedora!

Stepping out to do something new can be challenging, as well as rewarding, as Meld reporter Fedora Gracia discovered when she covered the basketball event at ASEAN Games Australia. She wins October’s story of the month. Read on to find out why.

Sports: ASEAN Games Australia 2013: Philippines dominate Men’s Basketball
Reporter: Fedora Gracia

Pageviews: 598
Facebook Likes: 57
Tweets: 1
Average time on article: 02:49

Editor-in-chief Karen Poh’s comments:

This was Fedora’s first time covering a sporting event. Despite her nerves, she took on the challenge and plunged into the deep end, and emerged the better for it. Her story was interesting and engaging as she paid attention to the action and details, and showed she had read and applied the tips provided to reporters prior to the event. She filed the story promptly, and also took the extra step to ask for feedback.

All the photographers who spent time out in the field covering this year’s ASEAN Games also deserve a special mention for their efforts. Beyond the action, they did well to capture the spirit and emotions that ran high among the players.

Other top stories for October:

News: The Chindian Diaries: Love knows no cultural bounds
Reporter: Beatrice Foong

Pageviews: 532
Facebook Likes: 32
Tweets: 2
Average time on article: 04:00

Editor Sandra Qian’s comments:

Beatrice should be commended for her coverage of The Chindian Diaries, a project exploring the meaning of being a Chinese-Indian. Despite having to sift through a sea of information for the story, she was able to weave together a very coherent piece that was not only engaging but navigated the more serious issues to do with race and belonging expertly. The broader themes of life, love and finding one’s self-identity made the story very relatable, even though it was about a somewhat ‘niche’ topic.

Lifestyle: As recommended by you. Great spring reads
Reporter: Juliana Mare

Pageviews: 121
Facebook Likes: 9
Tweets: 1
Average time on article: 03:07

Editor Elisa Scarton’s comments:

I’m nominating this article because it delivered. It was really well written. The reviews weren’t too long. The plot sections didn’t give away the story and I thought Juliana chose people and books that would appeal to our readers. I was even inspired to go out and buy one of the books.

Looking at the analytics, I found people really engaged with the story. The average time spent on the page was 3 minutes, which meant people read it from start to finish. I found this quite interesting considering we don’t do a lot of book reviews. I was happy people liked it.

The copy didn’t need a lot of editing and I thought Juliana captured the style and form of Meld Magazine.

Entertainment: Pianist Hoang Pham, musical success story at 27
Reporter: Jessica-Anne Lyons

Pageviews: 489
Facebook Likes: 125
Tweets: 1
Average time on article: 05:45

Editor Hieu Chau’s comments:

Jess has proved to be a more-than-efficient reporter in the Entertainment team and her commitment to creating a good piece is evident not only within the feature itself (which tells a good story) but also in her ability to work collaboratively with me to ensure the piece comes out looking good (this included sourcing images and other media as such supplements were somewhat hard to come by).

She understood how to interview an entertainment personality and was able to concentrate it within the context of Meld’s audience which proved to be resonant evidently with the story being “liked” 125 times on Facebook.

Tech: University of Melbourne’s ‘FAIR’ app for academic referencing
Reporter: Faridah Wu

Pageviews: 73
Facebook Likes: 3
Tweets: 1
Average time on article: 02:22

Editor Grace Yew’s comments:

Faridah’s short app review focused on the University of Melbourne’s new academic referencing app. I’m nominating it for the tech section’s top story because Faridah demonstrated good initiative for what would otherwise have been a straightforward review. She engaged with the app and criticised its shortcomings: her brief retelling of her personal experience with the app’s features (namely, the referencing quiz) was persuasive without becoming too much of a marketing spiel, a trap into which a lot of reviews can fall. Aside from minor restructuring, the writing was concise, flowed well, and didn’t need much editing. Faridah has made a great start here at Meld and I look forward to seeing more from her in the tech section.

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