I'm A Reporter!

Tuesday afternoon I have an intro to journalism class. This past week, one of the heads of the Iowa State Daily, our school newspaper, came to speak to the class, basically to recruit new writers. He explained that while the classes we're taking are important, they won't mean hardly anything compared to real work experience, and for those of us who want to be journalists in the future, it is in our own best interests to start getting some of that experience now.

I had known that there was a school newspaper, but I didn't know anything about it, and I didn't know anything about how to join. I had thought about looking into it later, after I'd been in journalism longer than just one week, but when he came into class looking for people to join, I decided not to wait. I applied the next day, and I had an interview this afternoon. There wasn't really even any question on will I or won't I get the job. He basically said that if we want the experience, they will find a place for us. Training starts on Monday and I am so excited! This is almost like a dream come true, but it's sort of like a dream I never knew I wanted.

As I've said before I have never really thought about being anything other than an artist. Until last semester I had never even thought about being a journalist myself, which is odd, because some of my favorite fictional characters have been journalists ever since I was a kid. My two favorite Superheros are journalists in their day-to-day lives, Superman, is a newspaper reporter as Clark Kent, and Spider-Man is a newspaper photographer as Peter Parker. When I was into the Left Behind series, my favorite character was Buck Williams, another newspaper reporter. When I was obsessed with Smallville, my favorite character was Chloe Sullivan, school newspaper, then later Daily Planet reporter. I always thought that being a reporter would be a fun job, but I also thought of it as something that other people did, not something I could ever do. Sort of like how I knew that cities like Chicago and New York were real, but not places I could ever visit. I was weird like that.

So anyway, I am now a reporter at the Iowa State Daily, and eventually this will lead to being a photographer as well. He told me that he'll have me talk to the photography department, and that being both a journalist and a photographer would be great, because I can shoot for all my own stories. I will keep you updated on how everything goes. This could be the first step toward something huge!