by Chloe Kiparsky
Here is a list, in no particular order, of all the things I don’t like about journalism:
- I have to transcribe all of my interviews, and I never use all the quotes I spent so much time trying to write down.
- Writer’s block is so real for me. There’s literally a cinderblock that falls from the sky and smashes my keyboard sometimes. I pay frequent visits to the basement where the smashed keys can be repaired.
- If I don’t want to write the article, it takes me forever and feels like what I imagine giving birth would feel like, except with more pain and less reward.
- If I don’t like what I write, I feel awful putting it out in the world.
- If I like what I write, I compare everything to that one piece, when, of course, I can never replicate anything. I’m not ChatGPT, unfortunately.
- I met a reporter who made the profession seem both boring and depressing. So maybe I should just give up.
- We’re not allowed to put curse words in the paper, which makes sense. However, it does seem peculiar when…
- The whole point of the paper is to “represent the Ouray High School experience and what students think about,” according to my English teacher. Breaking news: writing for the Tribune isn’t very popular, and our demographics definitely do not represent all Ouray High School Students. It’s hard to do that as it is, especially without using profanity.
- The Tribune gets circulated to the whole county, which is great, but I have a nightmare that most people throw it away. Which brings me to…
- Most kids at school don’t read it. I almost guarantee that at least half of my classmates will never know that I wrote this sentence.
I hope it is obvious to you at this point that I’m poking fun at something I love. This list hurts a little bit because all the points are true, but being the editor and writing for this paper is truly one of the best growth experiences I’ve had so far.
It definitely means something that I could only think of ten reasons why I don’t like it. Some of them aren’t even very good reasons! I should probably work on my rhetorical strategies, but then again, why would I want to strengthen reasons why I don’t like the Tribune? I love the Tribune! Please note the red flashing lights and confetti around those words. I just thought that this would be more interesting if it wasn’t just a book report on why I’ve been doing this for 2 years. Trust me, I would cry if I couldn’t write my silly little articles every day.
Each of those reasons why writing is difficult has a flip side that brings me so much joy. I will be very sad to leave the paper next year, as I will be in Spain (it’s pretty hard to write news for a school halfway across the world, it turns out), but mark my words, the Tribune will be back and better than ever my senior year (I’m not saying it won’t exist in some form next year; the Tribune will 100% survive without me. I just like to be dramatic).
If I were an alien, I would wonder why we humans put black squiggles on paper and race to see who can fold said paper the fastest. But I’m not an alien. So I guess I’ll keep grinning over my little black squiggles, and hoping to find little kernels of meaning in the white spaces between them. I hope you’ll join me.