Friends! Sorry I've been missing in action, work is kicking my ASS. just a heads up I'll be reviewing the last of your homework submissions through the end of next week. Thanks for your patience and understanding!! Hope everyone's doing well!

Hello all! My name is Francesca and I'm a video journalist turn- ing content creator. I know I'm late to the homework, but the course and the live calls have been amazing, so I want to follow through. I've always been interested in the intersection of pop culture, politics, and society. I've created content in that space for work, but with others in front of the camera. Now, I want to start creating for myself with me at the forefront. MY PILLARS: Compassionate, Curious, Credible MY WHY: I want to make people interact with the media they consume more intentionally. I want to give people comfort and joy. Content I love: This is a video package I scripted for work on the economic impact Bad Bunny's PR residency would have on the island. Although I didn't voice the package, I really enjoyed writing it, and I felt so proud pitching this to my team. It felt great building out a pop culture topic into something with more depth that leaves viewers feeling smarter about an artist they like. I would love to do similar videos/topics for myself and talk more about the intersection of pop culture and politics, but I worry if I get too political, I'll get in trouble with work. So, I plan to stick to more pop culture, books, and music/k-pop topics for now.

Hi everyone! I’m Diamond. I’m a culture journalist and poet/novelist based in Chicago (and sometimes NYC). I’ve worked at Bandcamp and Rookie, amongst other places. I wanted to take this class to gain new tools around TikTok. I feel more at ease on text-based platforms like Twitter (RIP), Threads, and Substack. But I decided I want to grow my TikTok and Instagram followings. My brand pillars are culture, fun, and curation. Culture: That looks like insights on pop culture or relevant conversations based on my background. Fun: I said I was only going to try to grow my TikTok and other platforms if it’s fun for me and my followers. That means not being too serious. I make collages and moodboards in addition to talking head and curated recommendations. I remember when the internet was fun and I don’t want to lose that. Curation: My most popular content on TikTok has been my curated recommendation series, which at this point, has been largely static cards but I’ve started doing book reviews. I plan to make more music recs as well. I’ve been thinking about making a video about how the push for only data-informed decisions has impacted culture journalism. This is the draft script below. Which opener should I go with? ~~~~~~~ *We’re letting the losers win.* Hi, I’m Diamond. A lot of my career has been in cultural journalism. That means recommending music, films, TV, books, etc. and that work has never been done with a data sheet. I’m not looking at a spreadsheet to tell me what’s cool. I’m looking at the world around me and observing. We live in an era where everything is increasingly determined by data. But what’s cool or culturally impactful cannot be determined by looking at data, and we’re letting the people who think it can determine culture. I’ve been watching @Denasia’s series on the collapse of the marketing industry due to the push toward only data-informed decisions, along with AI making it worse. I’d like to talk about this from my perspective as a culture journalist and a social media strategist.