Albeit eight days late, though my first real post happened a year ago yesterday, and I haven't gone to bed yet, so let's just call it a birthday, shall we?
I started this blog to keep up my writing. I've always been interested in journalism, whether print or media. In primary and elementary school, my dad would have stacks of newspapers everywhere, and every night at 5:30 he'd turn on NewsChannel 5 to watch NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw. My obsession with newspapers and current events most definitely stemmed from there. Eventually, I got in the habit of keeping up with the news myself, even starting out by bringing the Sports and Everyday sections to school with me to read after hours. I remember, I think it was fourth grade, a group of parents standing around my table commenting on how studious I looked. I didn't know why at the time, especially since I enjoyed reading the newspaper.
This obsession continued into middle and high school, where instead of going to the field house to roughhouse with my classmates and play basketball after lunch, I always went to the library to read the day's news, especially sports (which if you haven't figured out by now, is my passion, and basically how I started following current events, except for the one time I made my parents record a 1992 Presidential Debate. I think the tape is around somewhere). I spent so much time in the library, all the librarians knew me quite well, and I ended up prefecting for them senior year.
And of course, that eventually led to writing for the school newspaper in high school for 3+ years. There have been some articles that I was really proud of and somehow got the school buzzing, others not so much but still got the school buzzing. It's funny, really, because I never really liked writing English papers. I was always too mechanical in my methods, making sure everything fit perfectly into the template I was given in seventh grade, and taking every teacher's remark literally and incorporating it into all of my future papers. But with a newspaper article or an opinions piece, everything just flowed from my mind onto the computer screen. It was an almost seamless transition. So long as I had a story and facts to back it up, maybe some quotations, and an opinion of course with opinions pieces, it worked out well.
Three things that didn't happen that I wish had had: got a story on the front page (though I got the spread a couple times, I believe), been able to dedicate more time to layout, and thus snare an editor-in-chief position, one of which I lost out to someone who had started with the paper a year after me. However, I somehow got honored by the state newspaper competition that our newspaper sends a few issues to each year for having one of my articles stand out, ironically the only one that year I did not write about an issue surrounding the school. Neither editor-in-chief could say that, though they did represent the newspaper with the top newspaper award. (Shameless plug: http://www.jburroughs.org/theworld/index.html)
I always got great feedback from my classmates and other students, teachers, my fellow aspiring journalists and editors-in-chief, and most importantly, the faculty advisor for the newspaper, whom I ran into a month ago while visitng the school, and who told me the reason he always asks if I'm still writing is because I showed promise in high school, had an opinion or something to write about, and got it in, and of course, wrote well (his paraphrased words, not mine).
I've been interested in continuing through college, but:
1. Student Life is not a quality newspaper that I don't really want to be associated with, even if my writing could use a lot of improvement, and even if I've been told I should join so I could change everything, which leads me to...
2. Not much time to write or be involved. The task gets more serious the higher you climb the ladder, having to spend more time doing research, hunting down sources, getting information and quotations, attending more events, double- and triple-checking your work to make sure it's top quality. Heck, I rarely have time to write on this blog.
3. However bad StudLife is (horrible writing, lack of priorities, mediocre layout, too much fluff, among other things), I'm not going to do something if all I can do is mail it in.
4. I've thought about starting my own paper, but that would take up even more time than I have already, and I only have one more year to do so if I did try.
And thus this blog started, so I could keep writing on my own time about anything I want. Readership has been pretty much zero, though writing is more of a pasttime for me than to gain popularity. Someday, maybe, a career on the side in journalism would be nice, possibly a correspondent or expert in either print or media, and before that possibly joining the graduate school newspaper if there is one. But until then, this will have to suffice, and I seriously hope to be able to keep this going consistently. Y'all'd better keep me on it as well.
Ideas that have been in my head for a while:
- A-B/InBev-done
- Airlines, including mergers, flight cuts, financial woes
- Midwest floods
- Obama/McCain and/or Obama/Clinton
- Baseball, including possibly All-Star Game, Tampa Bay, NL Central-done (see ArmchairGM page)
- Princeton Review and studying-done
- Gordon Ramsay
- Whole Foods
- Time management-done
- Life changes-done
This would be perfect for a 5 points, I guess, though I was never too pleased with the quality of those pieces. Or, I could give each topic its own article, but that may lead some things to be really old news. Let me know about what you think as well, the 0.376 people out there who are reading this.
Anyway, it's been long enough. I'll be back soon, hopefully this weekend. And give me some feedback. I need to improve.
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