Journalism Final

Before taking Advanced Journalism, I had felt like I was a pretty good writer. In high school and college I had had papers, poems, and essays nominated for various awards, and on special occasions, sometimes I would win. I am a stickler on grammar, and I have a tendency to create long sentences with the help of my favorite writing tool, the comma. Writing had become second nature to me and rarely was I intimidated by a written assignment, that is, until I took my first journalism class.
I was introduced to AP style, which, I must admit, I completely despise. An entire book chuck full of new rules I had never heard of? AP style was definitely not my style. I struggled through my first AP style experience with frustration, grammar errors, and a colorful bruise to my ego.
Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to see “Advanced Journalism” on my class line-up for this semester. However, once in the class, I found a new appreciation for journalism, my knowledge of the AP style began to expand, I started to find my tone and style when it comes to writing for journalism.
Throughout my experience in Advanced Journalism, Google helped me extensively. With the help of this tool I was able to find an answer to nearly all of my AP style questions with lighting speed. Well, I guess I’m still not clear on ordinal numbers. Aside from needing to conquer AP style, I also needed help in understanding the formatting of articles. I had long since mastered the inverted pyramid of my original Journalism classes, and I had a feeling there had to be a little variety somewhere. I found this format variety in Donald Murray’s book, “Writing to Deadline: The Journalist as Work”.
About a fourth of the way into his book I landed on a few simply illustrated pages that opened my eyes to the world beyond the inverted paragraph. Murray explained the structure of articles as looking like everything from linear boxes to mountains to crosses. It was finding this part of Murray’s book that helped me realize, there is no wrong way to structure a story. The story, more often than not, will have a set-up all its own without any of your input or guidance.
I am a person who works well with rules, structure, guidelines, etc. Journalistic writing works much to the contrary of my personal preferences. This was another hurdle I had to overcome in my thinking when it came to writing articles. The idea that there’s no wrong way to write an article was something that became apparent to me over the course of the semester. Some articles, such as Bill Turque’s account of the election painted vivid pictures starting with the lead, “When history landed, it was with car horns, tears, gunfire, and echoes from historic corners of the city.” Other’s, like Paul Krugman, took a bit less “fluffy” tone in their writing/blogging. After reading and reviewing more stories than I can count, the picture became more and more clear. I could write however I wanted.
For weeks, Doc had been beating his brains out trying to get us students to realize the importance of finding a “new angle on a story”. Stephanie McCrummen’s account of the election stood out to me as a landmark article for helping me understand the value of finding a different point of view. Though it was far into the semester when it was posted to the class blog, its topic was something that grabbed me. “KOGELO, Kenya, Nov. 5—The news arrived in this rural village as the sun rose Wednesday…” While reporters were in a frenzy covering the election and its implications and meaning to Americans, McCrummen was not writing about the election, but rather, the feelings the day after the election. And not only that, but she was writing about Kenyan’s the day after the election. She was on a deadline, and she came up with a piece that stood out among the other election accounts. It was this article that showed me small changes to the norm keeps a journalistic piece exciting and fresh.
One of the biggest things I learned not to do from this class was found when searching for ways to get my free-lance work published. I found on a small how-to publishing website something I had never heard before, “Don’t write anything that has been covered by the publication in the last three years.” This was baffling to me. THREE YEARS? But the more I thought about it, like most things in life, the more it made sense. Publications are looking for something new, original and exciting, not something that has been done before.
This piece of information was, I thought, eye-opening. However, along with that being eye-opening, so was everything else I heard about free-lance writing. Free-lance writing was one of those things that I guess I knew existed, but I had never actually put any thought what-so-ever as to people actually doing it, how it worked, or the fact that I could do it myself. As we learned more and more about free-lance writing the more I realized what good basic knowledge it was to have, even if never to be put into practice. It was especially interesting and incredibly relevant to read Peter Ellertsen’s article, who also just happens to be our teacher, “Minding the Store as New Salem”, published in the Illinois Times. This experience put free-lance writing into a real setting. It really could be done. Publications really would except “outsiders” work. This idea had been so foreign to me up until this point.
Towards the end of the semester it came time to put all of my hard earned knowledge to the test. All of the AP style exposure, story structure struggles (I still love to alliterate.), and my new-found understanding of free-lance was about to be put to the test. I had a feature story to write. I contemplated for weeks on how to write my story, what to write about, who the main subject would be, etc. All through the semester I had been writing analysis of major feature articles such as an article in the Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi, “The Death of a Red State”; or Francis Fukuyama’s article, “The Fall of America, Inc.” But my favorite, by far, and the inspiration for my own feature story, was an article on Salon.com, “Obama When No One is Watching”. The article told the story of Obama’s daughter’s soccer game; a simple story, but very telling. Lines like, “we of the city are just a million small town kid’s soccer game scenes all strung together.” stood out to me as great metaphors, poetic writing, and a different edge on such a simple scenario.
Now here I am, at the end of the semester, and I have been shocked to find that I actually really enjoyed myself. AP style was not the end of me after all, the extensive amount of writing didn’t get the best of me, and I’ve met my deadlines. I still need help in mastering the world of AP writing and I doubt you’ll be seeing any of my work published anytime soon; but I have found my voice in journalism. I have discovered my tone.
Conversation is what moves my writing. I want my readers to feel like I am speaking directly to and with them. I like accuracy, fluid story lines, and structure. But most of all, I like writing about things that are important to me, things that other people may not have seen. Aside from the basics of writing for publication, finding my journalistic voice was, this semester, my greatest accomplishment.