Its been a while. A long while. Apologies to anyone who reads this blather.
It's 2009. Our economy is still in shambles and newspapers are closing left and right.
My sophomore year in high school was when it clicked. I wanted to be a journalist. I had read the musings of Daniel Pearl and was in love with Peter Jennings, two very different mediums, but two very amazing people. Both whom have died in recent years along with tangibility and time.
I chose the print side. I wanted to write. Something about the ability to hold the news in my hands was intriguing and there were stories needed to be told.
My desire to talk to people and my curiosity of the world around me pushed me further and by the time I was in college, I was writing for a weekly paper and local magazine. I had two amazing teachers, both who had Pulitzer Prizes under their belts tell me that I was improving each day and I was going to be something great one day. I was starry eyed and excited, ready to take on the world.
Then, I graduated. Nothing happened.
I applied and applied and applied. Nobody gave me a chance. I had one interview out of the many I scrambled to grasp onto and they gave the job to someone who had worked there before.
So now, I am back where I started. A local news station as a Production Assistant. I don't dislike my job, I do enjoy it, but its not where I wanted to be.
I at least had my freelancing gig with that local magazine. Now I sit here in uncertainty as for the first time in a year, I was not given a piece to work on. She had no money to give me and will not let me work for free.
I've shed tears over this. I have moments where I find myself seeing the future, I'm in my late 40's, with some desk job, and I never did what I wanted to do.
I only get one chance to make something of myself. What do I do now?
I've started utilizing my eye and camera, as I've gotten back into photography. If I can't write a story, I will capture it with images. I have had a few people placing trust in me to capture some of the most important days in their lives and I'm honored.
But I still feel empty.
I am going to have to branch out. The internet may be my source of conquering my dreams as most papers are going digital.
It doesn't feel the same though. Its not the days of the Washington Post and Watergate, when real journalism happened, digging and thumbing through books, papers, and having to talk to people, not a disembodied face on a white screen.
I'm also considering a book or feature piece as a side project. One that focuses on people with anxiety and their experiences. I do want to bring awareness to this debilitating disorder.
My editor of Lynchburg Living and career mentor, Johanna Calfree, told me this. She said that things are tough, things are changing, and I must revamp the way I think of a journalist.
As I said earlier, tangibility and time are being lost, through the internet. People want fast results, they want them now. They want updates and swift responses. They don't want to wait for the morning paper to land on their front step to know what happened the day before. People call it convenience, I call it laziness.
Everyone has a story. I want to tell some of them, but will they be seen? From being placed in a paper to being posted on the internet, the competition for attention has tripled. And that is intimidating.
I want to end with this. In 2006, Jim Sheeler won the Pulitzer Prize for one of the most heart-wrenching and well-depicted stories I've read about the military. He wrote for the Rocky Mountain News in Colorado. That paper has closed down.
This is what I'm afraid of losing: http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2006,Feature+Writing
It's 2009. Our economy is still in shambles and newspapers are closing left and right.
My sophomore year in high school was when it clicked. I wanted to be a journalist. I had read the musings of Daniel Pearl and was in love with Peter Jennings, two very different mediums, but two very amazing people. Both whom have died in recent years along with tangibility and time.
I chose the print side. I wanted to write. Something about the ability to hold the news in my hands was intriguing and there were stories needed to be told.
My desire to talk to people and my curiosity of the world around me pushed me further and by the time I was in college, I was writing for a weekly paper and local magazine. I had two amazing teachers, both who had Pulitzer Prizes under their belts tell me that I was improving each day and I was going to be something great one day. I was starry eyed and excited, ready to take on the world.
Then, I graduated. Nothing happened.
I applied and applied and applied. Nobody gave me a chance. I had one interview out of the many I scrambled to grasp onto and they gave the job to someone who had worked there before.
So now, I am back where I started. A local news station as a Production Assistant. I don't dislike my job, I do enjoy it, but its not where I wanted to be.
I at least had my freelancing gig with that local magazine. Now I sit here in uncertainty as for the first time in a year, I was not given a piece to work on. She had no money to give me and will not let me work for free.
I've shed tears over this. I have moments where I find myself seeing the future, I'm in my late 40's, with some desk job, and I never did what I wanted to do.
I only get one chance to make something of myself. What do I do now?
I've started utilizing my eye and camera, as I've gotten back into photography. If I can't write a story, I will capture it with images. I have had a few people placing trust in me to capture some of the most important days in their lives and I'm honored.
But I still feel empty.
I am going to have to branch out. The internet may be my source of conquering my dreams as most papers are going digital.
It doesn't feel the same though. Its not the days of the Washington Post and Watergate, when real journalism happened, digging and thumbing through books, papers, and having to talk to people, not a disembodied face on a white screen.
I'm also considering a book or feature piece as a side project. One that focuses on people with anxiety and their experiences. I do want to bring awareness to this debilitating disorder.
My editor of Lynchburg Living and career mentor, Johanna Calfree, told me this. She said that things are tough, things are changing, and I must revamp the way I think of a journalist.
As I said earlier, tangibility and time are being lost, through the internet. People want fast results, they want them now. They want updates and swift responses. They don't want to wait for the morning paper to land on their front step to know what happened the day before. People call it convenience, I call it laziness.
Everyone has a story. I want to tell some of them, but will they be seen? From being placed in a paper to being posted on the internet, the competition for attention has tripled. And that is intimidating.
I want to end with this. In 2006, Jim Sheeler won the Pulitzer Prize for one of the most heart-wrenching and well-depicted stories I've read about the military. He wrote for the Rocky Mountain News in Colorado. That paper has closed down.
This is what I'm afraid of losing: http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2006,Feature+Writing
