In late August, the Kalani newswriting team had yet another great guest speaker come in to inspire us all, Ms. Catherine Toth Fox, a writer for the Honolulu Magazine, took time out of her busy schedule to come and speak to us.

Ms. Toth Fox currently works as food blogger for the Honolulu Magazine and has her own personal blog called the “The Cat Dish”. Over the years she had many jobs in journalism: a freelance writer, a newswriting advisor at Roosevelt High School, teaching at Kapiolani Community College, writing for the Advertiser, and more. Ms. Toth Fox has a lot of experience and clearly knows what she’s talking about, therefore making her a great guest speaker for our class.

For the period we shared with her, we learned a lot about the world of journalism. We were told about the many perks you get when working with media: travel, meeting special people, and getting to know information before the general public. However, that’s not all of it. As fun and simple as it seems, Ms. Toth Fox mentioned that it can get complicated and you are most likely to get hate mail. “Your job is to tell the truth” she noted. “You’re supposed to tell it how it is and there is a time and place for your opinion.” We also learned that your audience is key and what you write is mainly based off their preferences.

We also got into the topic of today’s technology and how it’s taking over everything, including our beloved books and magazines. The internet is a great place to find news, it is fast, easy to access, and technically free. With the advancement of the internet, tangible sources aren’t the number one source for information anymore. However, Ms. Toth Fox told us that social media is in fact helpful in advertising, crowdsourcing, and engaging with your audience. Looks like the internet isn’t as detrimental to our traditional sources as we thought.

By the end of the period, many of us have left feeling inspired and compelled to do more with our writing abilities. Ms. Catherine Toth Fox was very entertaining and a great guest speaker for our newswriting students. Hopefully, after this, our class will produce even better articles than ever before.