Reflecting on the life of a journalist

Over the past two years I have been enrolled in journalism. As a part of this class I have gotten to see homecoming from two feet away, go to concerts for free, promote my cross country and track and field teams, and photograph Powderpuff football twice. It’s been fun. Almost everybody complains about the early mornings but despite this I have enjoyed journalism.

I still remember when I applied to be on the newspaper staff. There is an application that has a mistake on it and after filling in the application you are supposed to find it. I was so nervous, I read over the application for a full day before I dared to turn it in. My application said there was only one mistake. After succeeding in finding two mistakes I was confused as to which one I was supposed to point out.

“Here you go Mr. Johanson,” I said.

“Wonderful, thanks. I’ll give it a look and let you know after a week or so,” responded Johanson.

“I wanted to let you know that there are two mistakes on that form. See here there is a ‘to’ that was left out,” I commented.

“Really?” He scanned the document to verify my correction. “You’re hired!” Johanson exclaimed as he gave me the thumbs up sign.

Not all things are bright and cheery on the staff however. Perhaps I was oblivious or merely ignorant of what I was supposed to be upset about but after the first year of journalism my colleagues felt sorry for me because I had a sports story almost every issue in my first year. I didn’t mind really but I did notice that I had never had my opinion printed in the paper that year. Every time the budget came around I was not assigned to write an opinion so I did not write one.

My second year illustrated a possible reason as to why this happened. I found that editors took a while to learn the staff writers’ names since the editors are people who have been on the paper for two years and staff writers are usually just starting their participation in The Olympian. Consequently, the editors do not really know when writers are being given the same kind of story over and over. Like I said, I did not mind.

When a journalist is assigned a story he/she has to remember that the paper itself has no care for the difficulties held therein. A journalist must only seek the goal that has been given to them. Should a mountain need to be moved to get a story, the mountain will be moved. I think this is why people sometimes think that reporters are not very nice people.

When reporters are assigned a mission they pull out all the stops to do their job. It is not that reporters do not care about people, it is that they have a responsibility to fulfill and sometimes that responsibility infringes on other people’s personal space.

In conclusion I must say that if you are considering journalism here at CVHS, make sure to ask for the things you want to cover. For me, it was taking pictures, so I that’s why I shot Powderpuff as well as homecoming. Our paper will let you cover almost anything. All you have to do is ask.