Hi! I’m Ashley.
Click around to look at my portfolio website and blog, where I document my life and work as a journalism and public relations student.
Click around to look at my portfolio website and blog, where I document my life and work as a journalism and public relations student.
From time to time, I write articles for Indianapolis Monthly's "Encounter" page as freelance projects. The page details the scene of a little-known group or performance in the city.
I crafted this article by traveling to Chatterbox Jazz Club and spending the night observing the sights and sounds of the off-the-clock Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra musicians.
Read it here.
During my immersion semester for the Pulliam School of Journalism at the Indiana Statehouse, I wrote several in-depth stories about complex and dark issues, including this piece about two bills aimed to establish programs and resources to reduce youth suicides in the state.
I spent hours interviewing and photographing the subject of the article, Lana Swoape, in her home, as well as conducting immersive research and additional interviews about the legislation.
Read it here.
Indianapolis Monthly publishes a weekly "Hot List" with coveted apparel, beauty and home items. This article was particularly fun for me because of my interest in women's fashion. I scouted the products around the city.
I challenged myself to use strong verbs and short phrases to make this article as succinct and catchy as possible.
Read it here.
I worked on this breaking story as the news editor for The Franklin, the student newspaper at Franklin College. I worked on-deadline to get multiple interview sources to make the Friday print edition, as well as update the story online.
The story continues to be one of The Franklin's top-clicked and shared articles on the website.
Read it here.
During my internship at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, I wrote a few ready-to-run articles like this one.
This particular article was published in Indy's Child magazine as both a promotional and public relations piece for an upcoming museum exhibit about the Ninja Turtles.
Read it here.
In addition to my daily radio news story assignments during my internship at 90.9 WFYI-FM, I put up a voting round for the station's "Curious Indy" series, where people submit questions about what they wonder about Indianapolis.
For this article, I answered: "Every city has those local commercials everyone grew up with. What could be seen as Indy’s most iconic ad campaign?"
The article required a lot of calls and research, including locating hard-to-find footage of the "Hudnut Hook," which the Hudnut foundation didn't have film of at the time. I also conducted numerous interviews for sidebar stories with living local commercial legends to translate to both audio and print stories.
Read it here.
