hope
Posted in cali_lovin, theme thursdays on 02/23/2004 09:32 pm by Queenkvi can love, with my whole heart. i can believe in myself again. subtle miracles. Mark gave me hope - he saw the goodness in my when I couldn’t find anything decent. Medill gave me a chance when I couldn’t forgive myself.
School is kicking my ass - breaking down my ego on writing. It’s forcing me to re-define my ideas on news, politics, people, ethics, and possibly some aspects on life.
Every beat reporting day - it feels like I’m hanging by a shoe string to file these stories, or any story and to construct the damn lead (or lede). But I make deadline, often to the maniacal glee of a professor, who was making changes to my story up to 2 minutes before deadline.
“Hey Kris, did you file?” he asked.
“Yes,” I snapped.
“Good,” he said with a chuckle.
On our first day of writing, he set us off on a story. Then he started calling out random things to watch for like mis-spelled words and false facts.
“Are you trying to mess with us?” I asked.
“Of course,” he answered.
It’s a learning experience. I get frustrated and ticked off at my professors, but when it comes down to it - I’m learning. There’s always an oppertunity to re-draw the news story structure. Even during happy hour, my professor was copyediting stories for students were not in his class. He drew the same news story structure on their papers, like he did with mine during class.
During another educator’s tangent on news value, my professor lifted his vodka tonic and pointed out with his vodka tonic: “Hey Kris, did you get that? Third graph.” I nodded over my dirty vodka martini (vodka is not the drink of choice for journalism students and professors). It’s tough to take those knocks on stories I spent quite a few hours on travel and interviews and patience. But I know it’s necessary. I have to suck it up and apply that knowledge, somehow…..
maybe I should make a Word Doc template for that news structure….
