… and it is surprisingly optimistic.
Just spoke at a high school journalism conference — 6,200 kids from around the country. There’s nothing like a Washington convention hotel filled to the rafters with bright, young, energetic, enthusiastic, having-the-time-of-their-lives 17 year olds. And this was a journalism conference?
I had to keep pinching myself. I’m thinking: what do they know that I don’t? What do they know that all the media pundits, corporate execs, Wall Street suits, and the moaning masses of working (and recently down-sized) journalists can no longer even imagine?
Based on the sheer tonnage of irrepressible perkiness I saw at the Wardman Marriott hotel this morning, I’d say that whatever problems journalism faces in the transition between a print world and a digital world will simply be swept away.
I told them about my first job in journalism, as a reporter at the Independent Florida Alligator – the Univeristy of Florida student paper. I knew even before college I wanted to be a writer. But I noticed something: I wasn’t actually writing anything. The only time I ever did was when I had a class assignment, and even then I couldn’t bring myself to do it until just before the deadline.
I had this realization while sitting on the side of a mountain on the island of Ibiza in Spain. It was toward the end of my junior year abroad program, and I had my journal with me, which I had barely written in. I was trying to write then, but it just wouldn’t come. So I was sitting there, all alone in this beautiful spot watching the waves of the Mediterranean beating on the red cliffs that jutted into the sea, and I thought: “What I need is a lot of deadlines.” Right then and there I decided that I would join the student newspaper.
When I got back to Gainesville, I found out where the office was and walked in unannounced. It was off an alley, a block off the main drag, in what used to be the kitchen of a greasy spoon restaurant. It appeared that nobody had even bothered to clean the place before the newspaper moved in, much less remodel. Directly above the news desk was an old stove hood, still thickly caked with black, toxic-looking grease. Beneath the hood was a guy with mustache and long brown hair who identified himself as the news editor.
“I’d like to write for the paper,” I said.
He asked if I had any experience.
“No,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said.
I asked him what did matter.
“Just show up,” he said.
And that’s been working for me ever since.
Your talk was so inspiring. I am currently a sophomore feature editor of my school newspaper. I’ve been on a newspaper ever since junior high, making this my fourth newspaper year. I adore journalism and know that it will take a great part in my career. I loved hearing about your experiences as a writer; I know understand that deadlines are really the only way you get work done. Thank you for coming to DC for the convention to speak!
Tom, I’ve had a chance to talk to some of those kids who heard you speak. You hit it out of the park. Perhaps a career as a motivational speaker is in your future…?
Sure, why not?
Hey Tom,
Rick Rosen here, ex-Alligator photographer from those “good old days”. 35 years later, I’m running a massage therapy school outside of Chapel Hill, NC, and directing a national organization for massage therapy educators. All those J-school classes, and the Alligator experience, continue to pay off in myriad and unexpected ways.
Hi Rick, really good to hear from you. You make a great point — journalists may feel like their collapsing industry leaves them unqualified for anything else, but in fact, the skills of a good writer and reporter (hunting down the facts, eliciting crucial information, getting down to the essentials, communicating clearly and effectively) simply make a highly functional human being.