Getting Started
Planning our angle for this story was a process. Our group knew that stories on dating apps have been used before. Mustang News had published stories about dating in the digital world and we knew there was definitely an interest in this topic. We messed around with the idea of do’s and don’t of online dating. We also looked into reporting on what makes a good dating profile.
After discussing our idea with our professor we decided we needed to narrow dating online to just one app. We chose arguably the most popular dating app, Tinder. After researching other articles that explained exactly what the app is, we wanted to tell the stories of the people using Tinder. Success stories, failures, and everything in between.
It all starts with the decision to swipe right….
The Process
We were all assigned our roles for this project and buzzing with excitement for this not-so-traditional topic. Demi Castanon was the print portion, Kaylee Zaccone was multimedia, Trevor Melody and Rachel Furtado were broadcast and I was assigned PR.
I was definitely nervous to be assigned the public relations section of this project because I had never had a PR course at Cal Poly. I must say, once I got started with the preliminary PR portion, I was hooked. I did research and viewer outreach to gage what people wanted to know, I set up interviews and received a surprising amount of people willing to be asked about their dating life.
What better way to find a professional source about online dating than to look online! I reached out to Laurel House , tv personality and international dating coach. Here are her thoughts about using dating apps…
Rachel and Trevor started with their interviews and did a great job of helping people open up. They both decided to interview some of the same people but do different angles for their videos.
“I really like working with video again and editing because I haven’t been able to do that in a while.” Trevor says. He explained the only challenge he ran into throughout this process was using the Mustang News elements while editing the video.
“I had fun interviewing Harmony. She was super outgoing and gave me a lot to work with for the video! This was a fun topic to cover”- Rachel
They interviewed 4th year, Psychology major, Harmony Chen who admitted to downloading Tinder as a joke. “It was fun, it was like a game. I didn’t really take anything seriously.” Chen says. That’s until she met her now boyfriend, Jason.
I went with Demi to her interview with Elizabeth Alvarado, a freshman, Child Development major at Cal Poly. Elizabeth stopped using Tinder because she felt she needed to focus more of her attention on school.
“I loved writing my story about this topic and was surprised about how many people use this app.” Demi says. Her only challenge was finding someone willing to be interviewed about their personal life.
Kaylee wanted to create an interesting multimedia portion to this project but had trouble in the beginning. “I liked working with multimedia because it gives you a lot of room to be creative, but it’s the platform I’m the least familiar with so there was a bit go a learning curve for me.” Kaylee says.
Takeaway
After this project our group learned a lot about the ways people meet each other. Tinder opens doors for not only relationships, but good friendships as well. You never know wha connection are out there waiting for you.
It all starts with the decision to swipe right….
Happy swiping friends!
–Amanda Fridley