Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Columbia Journalism School: Thanksgiving Check-in
I am popping at the seams. I find myself listening to The Fame Monster by Lady Gaga on repeat, staring out dark subway windows on the 1. Half the time I'm just staring at myself in the window wondering whether I made the right choice to come, to be here, to pursue this profession.
I'm not the best in my class, in fact I'm far behind many of classmates in both reporting and writing. Whatever relative prowess or ability I thought I had with writing before has gotten mostly, if not almost entirely, swiped from my hands. Not to be a whiny pain in the ass, but my tail is in between my legs and for the last two weeks my self-esteem has been dragged through the muddy, sewage ridden New York gutters. A good analogy would be me as Peter Pan (circa Disney's 1953 animated release) and my self-esteem as his skittish, unattainable shadow running the hell away. I've attempted to re-attach my self-esteem but, like Peter, I've found that soap (or perky "you can do it!" chants in my case) just aren't cutting it to keep that sucker tacked to me. Who has a sewing kit I can borrow?
RW1 is the basic reporting class each of us has to go through before we can finish our Fall term. It is the largest, most demanding time and emotional suck of a class I have ever had. RW1 requires that you pick a beat to cover for the entirety of the semester -- a topic (food, money, health) or a physical neighborhood (Astoria, Harlem, LES, or in my case, Hell's Kitchen) and find stories for the duration of your time as a cub reporter there. This is how old-school daily print reporters have been trained for many, many years. You learn basic news writing style, how to structure a story, and get the shoe-leather reporting skills that generations before you have perfected. Ask the right questions. Find the leads. Get the story. Before we arrive, it's what we're all looking to learn at some level otherwise we wouldn't be here. We want that real world experience when so many of us have come from a reporting background of desk phone calls, press-releases or googling. Or, we have no experience at all.
The reality is you knock on doors and get rejected time and time and time again. You get laughed at when you tell people you're a student, you feel like an ass because you aren't publishing the work you're getting people to give their time up for, and everything you inevitably find out is about 50 percent less than you actually need. But really, these are all very good lessons that you learn. Every time you don't get what you want gives you a smack on the butt to get up and get it right the next time. Every failure feels terrible, but oh the successes, those sweet successes that come few and far between, are worth every terrible story idea or interview before it. The time you got that source to talk when no one else could, when you find the story that you've always known was there and everyone missed. It feels like you have been vindicated more, better, than you have been in years. Goddammit, you were right.
They tell you it's going to be hard when you get here. Actually, they tell you before you get here, when you get here, and while you're going through it. But lately that often doesn't seem like enough.
Almost all of the young journalists I've talked in the last few weeks, especially my classmates, have begun to voice questions, doubts, and concerns over whether we should be pursuing journalism. Are we built for this? Is our writing good enough? Is our reporting strong enough? Should we really be following this path? The industry is tough right now, tougher than before, and as the previous generation of journalists continues to get booted from newsrooms around the country, we're catching the trickle down of their messy company breakups. People are bitter, terrified, and often still cling to a model or ideal of journalism that doesn't match up with the world our class is seeing today.
We're being taught a standard of journalism that worked for more than a century, primarily based around daily newspaper production and writing. But we're also constantly confronted with these points: the industry is structurally changing, newspapers need to consider what content they're going to be good at cause, uh, people get most of that info elsewhere now (for free!), magazines no longer have ad pages coming in, and online journalism isn't yet generating enough revenue to be a feasible business model even with millions of followers. So, young reporters, what do we do?
There's no answer to that question right now. All I have are these curiosities sitting in the back of my head that need to be fleshed out, "unpacked" as so many professors here love to say. What I do know is that I feel like I've gotten smacked and kicked around a decent amount in the last four months. Speared, roasted, flambéed ... but I can't deny that I haven't learned a ton. I do feel infinitely better at reporting than when I entered (hmm, what does that say for how well I used to report if I'm still not good?), I'm reading more voraciously than before and I'm producing work I never thought I'd produce. I guess it's working the magic it's supposed to work, but goodness it's been a slog. I don't know if it was entirely worth it just yet.
Here's what I'm hoping: first semester presents you with all of the background, all of the questions that are being asked, and all of the situations that you might shy away from if you didn't have an organization shoving them in your face. I'm praying that second term will bring some solutions, some answers and a clearer path. I still find journalism titillating and engaging in a way no other industry really strikes me. But working in a daily newsroom seems like drudgery and frustration to me right now. I like reporting, but I struggle when I'm not interested in the story I'm telling. Maybe that's normal, though, and I'm just being an epically big cry baby. I can't decide if the pull I feel to radio broadcasting and photography is something worth pursuing, or just another path that will lead to the depressing realization that I'm not cut out for this.
Get broke down before you get built up. Right? ... Right. If I have a fit of tourettes when you next see me, please know it's not meant to offend in any way. I'm just a little imbalanced right now. Happy Thanksgiving, peeps!
I'm not the best in my class, in fact I'm far behind many of classmates in both reporting and writing. Whatever relative prowess or ability I thought I had with writing before has gotten mostly, if not almost entirely, swiped from my hands. Not to be a whiny pain in the ass, but my tail is in between my legs and for the last two weeks my self-esteem has been dragged through the muddy, sewage ridden New York gutters. A good analogy would be me as Peter Pan (circa Disney's 1953 animated release) and my self-esteem as his skittish, unattainable shadow running the hell away. I've attempted to re-attach my self-esteem but, like Peter, I've found that soap (or perky "you can do it!" chants in my case) just aren't cutting it to keep that sucker tacked to me. Who has a sewing kit I can borrow?
RW1 is the basic reporting class each of us has to go through before we can finish our Fall term. It is the largest, most demanding time and emotional suck of a class I have ever had. RW1 requires that you pick a beat to cover for the entirety of the semester -- a topic (food, money, health) or a physical neighborhood (Astoria, Harlem, LES, or in my case, Hell's Kitchen) and find stories for the duration of your time as a cub reporter there. This is how old-school daily print reporters have been trained for many, many years. You learn basic news writing style, how to structure a story, and get the shoe-leather reporting skills that generations before you have perfected. Ask the right questions. Find the leads. Get the story. Before we arrive, it's what we're all looking to learn at some level otherwise we wouldn't be here. We want that real world experience when so many of us have come from a reporting background of desk phone calls, press-releases or googling. Or, we have no experience at all.
The reality is you knock on doors and get rejected time and time and time again. You get laughed at when you tell people you're a student, you feel like an ass because you aren't publishing the work you're getting people to give their time up for, and everything you inevitably find out is about 50 percent less than you actually need. But really, these are all very good lessons that you learn. Every time you don't get what you want gives you a smack on the butt to get up and get it right the next time. Every failure feels terrible, but oh the successes, those sweet successes that come few and far between, are worth every terrible story idea or interview before it. The time you got that source to talk when no one else could, when you find the story that you've always known was there and everyone missed. It feels like you have been vindicated more, better, than you have been in years. Goddammit, you were right.
They tell you it's going to be hard when you get here. Actually, they tell you before you get here, when you get here, and while you're going through it. But lately that often doesn't seem like enough.
Almost all of the young journalists I've talked in the last few weeks, especially my classmates, have begun to voice questions, doubts, and concerns over whether we should be pursuing journalism. Are we built for this? Is our writing good enough? Is our reporting strong enough? Should we really be following this path? The industry is tough right now, tougher than before, and as the previous generation of journalists continues to get booted from newsrooms around the country, we're catching the trickle down of their messy company breakups. People are bitter, terrified, and often still cling to a model or ideal of journalism that doesn't match up with the world our class is seeing today.
We're being taught a standard of journalism that worked for more than a century, primarily based around daily newspaper production and writing. But we're also constantly confronted with these points: the industry is structurally changing, newspapers need to consider what content they're going to be good at cause, uh, people get most of that info elsewhere now (for free!), magazines no longer have ad pages coming in, and online journalism isn't yet generating enough revenue to be a feasible business model even with millions of followers. So, young reporters, what do we do?
There's no answer to that question right now. All I have are these curiosities sitting in the back of my head that need to be fleshed out, "unpacked" as so many professors here love to say. What I do know is that I feel like I've gotten smacked and kicked around a decent amount in the last four months. Speared, roasted, flambéed ... but I can't deny that I haven't learned a ton. I do feel infinitely better at reporting than when I entered (hmm, what does that say for how well I used to report if I'm still not good?), I'm reading more voraciously than before and I'm producing work I never thought I'd produce. I guess it's working the magic it's supposed to work, but goodness it's been a slog. I don't know if it was entirely worth it just yet.
Here's what I'm hoping: first semester presents you with all of the background, all of the questions that are being asked, and all of the situations that you might shy away from if you didn't have an organization shoving them in your face. I'm praying that second term will bring some solutions, some answers and a clearer path. I still find journalism titillating and engaging in a way no other industry really strikes me. But working in a daily newsroom seems like drudgery and frustration to me right now. I like reporting, but I struggle when I'm not interested in the story I'm telling. Maybe that's normal, though, and I'm just being an epically big cry baby. I can't decide if the pull I feel to radio broadcasting and photography is something worth pursuing, or just another path that will lead to the depressing realization that I'm not cut out for this.
Get broke down before you get built up. Right? ... Right. If I have a fit of tourettes when you next see me, please know it's not meant to offend in any way. I'm just a little imbalanced right now. Happy Thanksgiving, peeps!
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