My biggest lesson in two years of journalism school I’m giving you for free
I’ll give you the biggest lessons I learned in journalism school. If you’re writing about real people while covering real events, this hard-learned lesson will help you.
Journalism school for us was two years.
As a part of course load we would cover government meetings. That included student council meetings, of course, but we also went into town for evening city council meetings, we covered local school board meetings, and we even went into the criminal courts to cover criminal court proceedings.
One of our stories dealt with one poor fellow, 20 years of age, in criminal court for the first time in his life. It was the first and only time he had ever been charged with a criminal offense. He pled guilty to stealing a pack of hockey cards from a gas station. Total cost of his theft was five dollars.
The poor young fellow heard his name called in court. He got up and stood before the judge with 20 journalism students in the seats behind him, scribbling down the details of his horrendous crime. Minutes must have seemed like hours to him as he stood before the dispassionate judge. The fellow received a fine. He fled the courtroom, rushing by we 20 student journalists. He was red-faced, humiliated. I believe he’s gone straight for life.
These field trips gave us first-hand experience. We covered what we would cover after graduation as professional news reporters.
Some meetings were long. During many long droning discussions there wasn’t much news. But we had to be there to cover the meeting. We had to be there as the elected representatives went through their agenda.
We were learning this was the life of news reporter. We should have left our studies and taken up welding. Or nursing.
There are a shortcuts and alternatives to staying a meeting that drones on to midnight, but we’ll get to that in another story.
I was assigned to cover an evening student council meeting. The students around the council table weren’t moving quickly through that evening’s agenda. I was bored silly. I was waiting for more important items to come up so I could write the stories for the college newspaper that was being paginated in the morning.
A young man named Darrel- not all that young, maybe 25, married with kids- had gone back to school for an accounting diploma. He had been appointed as a member of the student council executive when one member left.
His agenda item was dealt with quickly. He asked his fellow councillors if they could have a microwave in council chambers so when council members worked late they could zap their food.
Another student told him, “There’s a microwave down the hall by the vending machines.”
Darrel said, “Okay,” and that was the end of that discussion, they moved on to another agenda item.
But I wrote it up. I made it funny, that Darrel’s suggestion was “zapped in seconds.”
The editors decided that story should be included. When the newspaper was published there was the story mentioning Darrel and his question about getting a microwave.
Well.
First let me tell you something about Darrel. He was working a full-time job while going to college. He was married. He was raising a child with his wife. He had been doing management for the restaurant he worked in., He decided that accounting would be a career with more money and would take him in a life direction he wanted. So he worked nights at the restaurant while he went to college days. When he slept I have no idea.
He was appointed to council after being interviewed by a three-person panel that I just happened to have sat on. He impressed me during that interview as being far more capable than any other candidate.
My short humorous article, I realized after it was published, painted Darrel as lazy and entitled. Darrel was none of those things. He was the hardest working person on our student council. He carried a significant load on top of other heavy responsibilities in his life.
He had been appointed to that student council position as it was too close to election time to have two elections back-to-back, so a three-person interview panel was formed, I was asked to be a part of it, and Darrel was appointed.
When elections were held a few weeks later Darrel ran for the position he so ably managed. I was in a classroom when Darrel came in and asked to stand in front of the room for a moment to ask us to vote for him in the coming election. No other student running for Darrel’s job was doing this, electioneering. That was impressive in itself, showing initiative.
After Darrel made his pitch, one student in the class asked him, “What about the microwave?”
Darrel was taken aback by the question. He stumbled on it. The class wasn’t with him. I didn’t speak up. I was taken aback as well. My story hadn’t been taken as simply humorous. I realized in that moment it described a good man in a way that was the opposite of what he was.
Darrel lost the election. The pay for his part-time student position was a few hundred dollars a month, but it was money he could have used as a family man. He was the most able person I knew in that student council position in my time in college. A less able person was elected, edging him out in the polling.
It was a hard lesson.
From that time on I treated each journalism story without the casualness I had previously. I understood I was writing about people who deserved respect and accuracy from me.
I learned many lessons in journalism school. Some lessons stayed with me, some didn’t.
That lesson stayed with me.
The lesson I learned on that one two-paragraph story that I wrote in amusement when I was tired and needed a few stories to be turned into my editor, guided my news coverage and writing from then on.
Of all my lessons learned for my two-year tuition fee that lesson stayed with me. I learned not to make fun of people in print. The printed word stays with people a very long time.
