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The Accidental Journalist
By Jonah Spangenthal-Lee | June 11, 2007
When I started working at The Polaris last September, it was purely by chance. While my childhood heroes - Peter Parker and Clark Kent - had both been journalists, I’d only ever taken a semester long course in high school and never had any aspirations to work in the field. After years of wanting to be a fiction writer, but never wanting to write, I sort of fell into my job as a reporter at The Polaris. I ended up waiting in line at the financial aid office with Rachel Pruett, the former editor, and struck up a conversation about the student paper equivalent of the Bad News Bears. When I found out it was a paying gig, I told her I’d be willing to drown a sack full of puppies for a job. One sack and a dozen cute widdle puppies later, I was in. I struggled with the rigid style - not to mention ethics - involved with news writing, but in February it all paid off when I started an internship at The Stranger. After a few weeks, that internship turned into a job, which has been attributed heavily to the day I decided to make and bring cheese-filled, bacon-wrapped, beer-battered, deep-fried hot dogs to the office. If you ever get a sweet ass internship, do that.
The staff of “Seattle’s only newspaper” – yes, that wonderful alt-weekly with all the stripper ads in the back - took me in as one of their own, like a pack of weird neurotic wolves. I’m just as surprised as you are. I wrote some really terrible articles for The Polaris (global warming, anyone?) - much to Heather Stark’s chagrin – but getting the opportunity to sit in the newsroom, pooling resources and arguing over the relevance of stories sure came in handy later on.
While it takes a lot of resources to run a newspaper, the benefits gained from giving students experience, let alone a voice on campus can’t be measured by a budget report. Sure, there will always be problems with getting students to be able to commit the time and energy needed to put out an amazing product. But in my time at The Polaris, we learned something every time we put out a new edition. Everyone developed their own set of skills. Whether it was interpersonal dynamics, layout or interview techniques, everyone on staff brought something to the table. The Polaris staff’s skills have grown and developed exponentially over the school year, which I think is clearly evident in the last several issues, not to mention the fantastically beautiful website. So how do you make it even better next year?
The transitional nature of the school is always going to be a hard hurdle to clear. The Polaris needs a solid base to build on every year, which means having someone in charge who knows what they’re doing. This year, Heather and I worked with Bob Schuessler from the communications department to begin establishing a link between NSCC’s academics and the paper. I hope the school gives Bob and Heather the opportunity to keep building that link next year.
To everybody at The Polaris, thanks for a great year, putting in all the hard work and late nights. Keep working at it. You never know where you’ll end up.
Topics: Editorial |