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Don't Judge a Book by its Cover: Part Four
Editor's Note: This is the final installment of a four-part series from Greg West, our Studio intern who is currently majoring in print/digital journalism at USC. West recently completed his internship with Demand Medis Studios and is on his way back to USC for the fall. Please enjoy.
Read part one here.
Read part two here.
Read part three here.
As I reflected upon my first experience as a junior reporter, I knew that I was beginning to love the job that I had originally hated; my first impression of the newsroom had turned out to be completely wrong.
Writing mundane stories used to drive me to shenangains around the office, but I now caught myself taking everything a little more seriously. I would visit the paper's website just to quietly stare in disbelief at my article.
Sure, I’d had articles published in newspapers and written a couple petite blogs, but this time was different. This article represented a piece of me; it represented what I considered to be the first real bit of reporting that I had ever done. It was important to me, and there were so many interesting experiences tied up in this article. I got to connect with fascinating people like Travis’ family in the Winnebago and go to the Phish concert in Mansfield, both of which brought new perspectives to my writing. However, the most important thing this article taught me was that I would be able to handle myself as an effective journalist.
Through this process I realized that reporting and searching out stories is what made journalism fun for me. Of course, this dually meant that I would have to sit around in the newsroom all day and actually work (and I mean WORK) on the stories I had covered, which I hated. And when I say "hated," I mean I would rather try to cage an angry badger than hang around the newsroom for 10 hours, but I guess even superman has a day job. In the midst of all of these new self-discoveries, I had also become interested in a new aspect of journalism: the online aspect. This was lucky, because things seem to be quickly changing.
All around the country newspapers are dying; local syndication is going up in flames. In Massachusetts, I got to see it firsthand at the local newspaper where I was working. Near the end of my job, right before I would head off to college, my editor approached me and asked politely if I would refrain from throwing anything “smelly” away after today. When I asked her why, she told me that the paper had just cut three-fourths of its cleaning staff due to budgeting issues.
The world of print journalism is digitizing fast, and as I stared at my words flickering on the monitor, I couldn’t wait to get out there and change it.
Read part one here.
Read part two here.
Read part three here.
As I reflected upon my first experience as a junior reporter, I knew that I was beginning to love the job that I had originally hated; my first impression of the newsroom had turned out to be completely wrong.
Writing mundane stories used to drive me to shenangains around the office, but I now caught myself taking everything a little more seriously. I would visit the paper's website just to quietly stare in disbelief at my article.
Sure, I’d had articles published in newspapers and written a couple petite blogs, but this time was different. This article represented a piece of me; it represented what I considered to be the first real bit of reporting that I had ever done. It was important to me, and there were so many interesting experiences tied up in this article. I got to connect with fascinating people like Travis’ family in the Winnebago and go to the Phish concert in Mansfield, both of which brought new perspectives to my writing. However, the most important thing this article taught me was that I would be able to handle myself as an effective journalist.
Through this process I realized that reporting and searching out stories is what made journalism fun for me. Of course, this dually meant that I would have to sit around in the newsroom all day and actually work (and I mean WORK) on the stories I had covered, which I hated. And when I say "hated," I mean I would rather try to cage an angry badger than hang around the newsroom for 10 hours, but I guess even superman has a day job. In the midst of all of these new self-discoveries, I had also become interested in a new aspect of journalism: the online aspect. This was lucky, because things seem to be quickly changing.
All around the country newspapers are dying; local syndication is going up in flames. In Massachusetts, I got to see it firsthand at the local newspaper where I was working. Near the end of my job, right before I would head off to college, my editor approached me and asked politely if I would refrain from throwing anything “smelly” away after today. When I asked her why, she told me that the paper had just cut three-fourths of its cleaning staff due to budgeting issues.
The world of print journalism is digitizing fast, and as I stared at my words flickering on the monitor, I couldn’t wait to get out there and change it.
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