PHS student making contributions at Hillsdale Daily News

by Emily Hines and Tommy Verdon

Among Pittsford High School’s very talented students is an especially talented student, sophomore Dillon Cooper. Dillon writes for our school newspaper and about a month and a half ago accepted a job writing for the Hillsdale Daily News.

“It has always been my dream to be a journalist and working with the HDN is a great step in the right direction,” shared Dillon. According to Dillon, Mr. Hoover helped Dillon land this job of his dreams. “I had a long talk with Mr. Hoover and he said he would talk to the sports department, and then I went for an interview and next thing I knew I was writing stories for the Hillsdale Daily News,” commented Dillon.

HDN sports editor R.J. Walters assigns specific articles to Dillon every so often. “Some weeks he has me swamped, and others I hardly have anything to do,” shared Dillon.

As we all know, having a job can have its advantages as well as its difficulties. “The toughest part is probably balancing all of my priorities and keeping them in order like school, sports, a social life, and a job,” expressed Dillon. And like any other job, there’s deadlines for every employee. “I have to write a story and get it in by 10 p.m. at the latest, but that isn’t too difficult unless the sporting event runs into overtime; then I have to really focus and get the job done,” explained Dillon.

There are also many steps to finishing his assignment. Besides collecting facts and writing the article, Dillon usually checks and proofreads his work about four times before he is finished. Even when he’s finished and his work is out of his hands, his articles go through three or four proofreads by other people.

Dillon also brought in a few newspapers with his articles in them and gave some people at school an opportunity to take a look at his work. “Dillon’s article about translating to a different sport was very informative,” commented Mrs. Davenport. “His writing was impressive!” she also expressed.

“I thought Dillon did a good job reporting the facts. He had the important facts; he interviewed other coaches, which was good,” complimented Mr. Burger. Mr. Burger also noticed that Dillon is a fan of the major sports media, and with that in mind, left Dillon with a small piece of advise: “Dillon needs to lay off the ESPN quotes,” joked Mr. Burger.

It’s obvious when asking Dillon about his new job that he is very excited about doing something he loves. “The best part of it all is probably the overall experience. Learning how to exactly phrase words and put them in the correct tense and even simple things like interviewing coaches and/or players which isn’t hard at all,” shared Dillon.

Dillon is very talented and PHS is very lucky to have him at our school and writing for our school newspaper. Make sure to keep up with Dillon and find out when his next article will be posted so you can read it and then give him a giant high-five!