UConn Journalism Major Samantha Faragalli Explains Her Daily News Recipe

There is this unex­plain­able feel­ing that I get when I walk past the news­stands the first week of each month. The head­lines scream beau­ty, fash­ion, sex, love, and all those oth­er life lessons my 21-year-old self would want to indulge in dur­ing my free time. The antic­i­pa­tion starts a few weeks pri­or: Which celeb will they put on the cov­er? What col­or will it be? Will I be inter­est­ed in the sto­ries these “Twitter/Insta famous” edi­tors write?

But what about those days where I’m run­ning around cam­pus with­out my fresh­ly print­ed mag­a­zine on hand? Well, thank the heav­ens for online.

My name is Saman­tha Fara­gal­li and I am a Jour­nal­ism major at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut with a dream of being the next Car­rie Brad­shaw in the big city. This is sim­ply due to the expe­ri­ence I described above. How amaz­ing would it be if I were the one to give read­ers that exact feel­ing? I am tak­ing online jour­nal­ism because it is the future of news, and also the future for myself and my peers. Sad­ly enough, before I know it that amaz­ing feel­ing that I get when I pick up a new mag­a­zine issue will fade, and I’ll be sole­ly star­ing at my iPhone screen read­ing about how bad things are between Rus­sia and Ukraine.

So where do I get my news? To be hon­est, I don’t read your typ­i­cal plat­forms. The NY Times bores me, along with most of it’s com­peti­tors. So I get my news from Cos­mo, Elle, Lucky, Glam­our, etc., both from print and online. Although I’m not read­ing about war and death, I am learn­ing about oth­er news­wor­thy things such as fash­ion and beau­ty- things I am inter­est­ed in.

This being said, I enjoy get­ting my news in a fun way. Not too wordy, not too dry. So when it comes time for the more “impor­tant” news, every morn­ing I receive a dai­ly email newslet­ter called theSkimm where two city girls tell me all I need to know in the world in 10 min­utes or less through puns, links and fun­ny one-lin­ers. Oth­er than that, I stick to social media. I enjoy read­ing tweets, Face­book posts, Buz­zFeeds, and Insta­grams from the sources we all know and trust. Let’s be real, I don’t have time for the 6 o’clock news and a cup of cof­fee with the news­pa­per in the morn­ing. Online has tak­en over, so I might as well learn how to be an all-star online jour­nal­ist, right?