The Theory of "Solutions to Journalism"

perhaps this is not the right time for a resolution-type thing but here it goes..

after much thinking, a long shower (i do a lot of thinking in showers lol), and getting over a sudden craving for fried onion rings and watching a youtube video on how to convert an infinity scarf into a dress (even though i have no such scarf and have no intentions to buy one), i thought that i should, well, try a lot harder next school year - especially in journalism. 

i'm not just saying to say, i actually do mean it. 

journalism was a tough class to be in last year and i hated it more than i loved it. in fact, at the end of the year, i don't think i really learned anything from the class except that it was HARD.  i suppose that it was a good class but my brain must have been so occupied with how miserable it was to acknowledge the good stuff.

it's harsh i know. i know there must have been some good stuff because El Estoque is supposedly one of the best high school news magazines in the country. so something is going alright. 

it's just that i cant remember it. 

in fact, at the end of the school year, instead of reflecting on all the good ol' times, i just felt like buffeted my way through a extremely busy and crowded mall and finally stumbled my way out the exit...or the fire escape. 

there were several reasons why i didn't like journalism. 

1. I was insecure about my writing. 

This was a big deal. I hadn't written anything for a year prior to journalism and i felt like i somehow bypassed the system and slipped in on the acceptance list. Therefore I struggled with writing and was afraid of writing anything. This was also a new feeling because I had no problem with writing before, especially in the Writing for Publication class, and now lack of experience made me lose my touch. I postponed writing because I was afraid of failure and when I did write it it sounded very structured and robotic. Making a plan and following through was the only way i knew how to make up for my lack of spontaneity.  

2. Lack of interest

Most of the time, i didn't find anything interesting in the stuff that i was assigned to write. So not only did i think how bad i was at writing, i didn't really bother to make my writing and story better. When i did bother it was out of obligation, guilt, or saving grades. I wasn't interested in the pitches that were coming in and I didn't bother to make any pitches because i had none. I didn't think i would be good in any leadership positions so i didn't sign up for any while people i considered to be incompetent were actively signing up. While everybody else was participating in meetings or discussions, all i could think of was "wow...i don't care." Well to some small degree i did care but for the most part i didn't. Why? well that leads into number 3: 

3. Nobody reads El Estoque. 

Not even El Estoque. I thought i was wasting my time because I know that it would be all for nothing since nobody bothers. One time a girl, who didn't realize that i was in journalism, told me that "i never read it, i mean nobody really reads it."  BOOM. Well it didn't have that big of an impact as the all caps implies since i knew that nobody really reads it. Nobody really bothers with the columns and especially not with center spread. So why would i bother? 

I lost my writing voice and my ambition in the journalism department. 

Course i wasn't the only one who felt this way and many times I've heard "For El Estoque" from others as a way to cope with pressure. People have cracked - yep, i've seen it. 

before i just went along with it because at the time it was the thing to do. I tried to mesh with the system - however wack the system was to me. 

But now, i think all that pent up frustration with myself has gotten my "voice" back. For some reason, I now have opinions on stuff, something that I lacked severely especially when i was in the Opinion section ironically. More importantly, I've got reasons and solutions to my problems. 

First off, I've always hated the phrase "for El Estoque." Bullshit. That motivator doesn't have enough fuel to fill up a go-cart. 

The reason why people don't like/bother reading El Estoque is because to them, the news magazine is this big authoritative government building with flags outside commemorating it's many awards and achievements. It's one of those places where you need to go through security, identification screening, and clearance to access it's files. You don't know anybody who works there but you know of people who do. 

As a journo class, we're constantly told to have a conversation with the student body and the community. Well how are you suppose to have a conversation with a damn building?? People here try to emulate pros, or what they think pros are in the journo world. They want to be the Crimson or the New York Times. They want to be "The Man" on issues and what not. 

You have a conversation with the guy on the street. You have a conversation with your friend. You have them with your parents or a classmate. You have a conversation with a person. 

El Estoque is not a person. It's not people. It's that big concrete building. And nobody wants to have a conversation with a building and nobody even thinks about doing it because it's absurd and pointless. 

And so when people get the magazine, everybody AUTOMATICALLY doesn't want to read it. It's a no brainer. Why talk to a building? Why read El Estoque? 

Every time somebody does, it's always so you can feel smarter.

"Well since i want to appear like an educated and informed person I suppose i should read this article on gun control..." 

I dunno if that's how adults operates, but for kids, especially ones who live in a safe environment untouched by the recession, gay parades, racial conflicts, and politics, they don't give a shit about supposed "issues" that are going on else where in the world. 

But sometimes in class, when teachers do want us to discuss these current events, kids do appear to have genuine opinions about it. They argue about and have conversations about it with other classmates. 

This all means that the writers of El Estoque has got to stop writing "For El Estoque." They've got to start writing for themselves. Don't be the NYTimes or Crimson or El Estoque. Just be a person.

Just be a person. That's all it is. The readers will respond to a person, not to some dumb wall. 

From the beginning, I got loped in with the other newbies to try to be "El Estoque" and tried to emulate past writers. We read old articles and tried to be the new style. Forget about everything you learned in writing for publications about finding "your own voice," you are in EL ESTOQUE now. Now start writing like us before we all unanimously look down upon you. 

A cycle of destruction, that is. 

Now i don't have any statistics or evidence for this theory, but i feel like it's worth trying. 

otherwise, El Estoque will just continue to be just pages to be ripped out so people can put chicken bones on during dinner. 

I will try this out myself. I will try to stop being something that I'm not. I've lost my "writing voice" but i hope this theory will help my dig it from beneath the layers of peer pressure crap on top of it. 

I mean if i don't do it, i don't think anybody else will. Surprisingly that was sort of the mentality that i had when i shaved my head. 

Another thing: I will be more enthusiastic about the things I write. And the only way to do that is to find stuff that i'm interested in and write about it. You can never make anything good if you're not enthusiastic about it. 

I used to just wait for the pitches to come in, dismiss them all as dumb, and pick the least rotten one. 

The journo advisor always tells us that we are to observe life and find the gold nuggets. 

I skimmed this "life"like I do sometimes to assigned reading. 99.99% of the time, i didn't find anything sparkling and i deducted from my non-findings that that's just what "life" is: one big boring book. 

But that's not true. Every time I perk up at something I heard in the news and every time I laugh, it's because i found something interesting. Every time i'm happy or sad it's because i found something interesting enough to bother with my emotions about it. There are quite a few big nuggets but those are all picked out and gone. But there are plenty of gold dust around that you would've never seen had you not skimmed around. 

And when there are no fat nuggets around, the dust can be worth a lot. 

if i find myself writing something that i'm not interested in, it's because i didn't bother to look harder. 

Make your own pitches and then write it yourself. 

in any case, with the old age of journalism itself, ALL the major topics are done and worn out. So start looking for the dust. And who knows, sometimes the dust can be a lot more interesting that the nuggets. 

The dust itself is always overlooked and is unexplored territory, like some parts of Papua New Guinea so that map is blank. Experts know that there are tribes that live there that are completely untouched by civilization and may be cannibals. Not that the dust is a cannibal....

Anyway, on to the point. 

All of this: enthusiasm and "being a person" will help to find the voice back. And it will be amplified many times over when you start having a conversation to the reader instead of just throwing them a bunch of fact cards. 

Well, like i said, just a theory. I've always wanted to try something new (as cheesy as that sounds) but i've always been afraid that it wouldn't work.  

But seeing that the alternative didn't yield any positive results last year, it's definitely worth a try.