Going into this class, I had one singular hope. That hope was that I wouldn't have to hear the word "blogosphere." With that in mind, I will say that I've been pleasantly surprised with my experience of writing my first article.
I open with that seemingly irrelevant snippet because I've been relieved at how much freedom has been given into the process of writing an article. While it's certainly not without it's chains, I see more opportunities than red tape. I can pick my topic, find my own people to interview, get my own pictures. Perhaps this may be due to this being a college class, but I enjoy not having to focus on buzzwords and gimmicks. It's just raw journalism. While I do have to answer to my editor and Commander, I enjoy the ability to go out there and do things the way I like, so long as I provide a semblance of professionalism.
Are there drawbacks? Yeah, sure there are. The biggest one I've noticed so far are time constraints. Just yesterday I was using Indesign to try to make everything fit together, adding pictures, doing last-minute spell checks, and already there's another deadline around the corner! Is there anything else that I don't like? Well, not much. Maybe it's that I can't pepper in some snarky attitude into my writing, but that's a small price to pay.
To be honest, I've had lofty career aspirations so far. My major is "English" because somewhere down the line of my educational career, I determined that I'm not a bad writer (perhaps I am and no one's pointed it out yet. If so, I apologize for the suffering and torment reviewing my works has caused.) However, with this experience in journalism, it's making me so far consider shifting my future career choice. Well, we're only one article down, so there's plenty of time to tell. So to this I say, allons-y!
- Mike Brown
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