A Serious Journalism Student

As a journalism undergrad, I thought writing was serious business. In class, we wrote about serious subjects, almost always in reverse pyramid form. There was no such thing as snark in journalism school. Writing wasn't funny stuff.

It seemed so serious, in fact, that I was scared off of it for a bit. I started favoring advertising/PR classes within the major because I liked the idea that they opened me up to the multimedia forum. I spent most of my time, however, writing press releases for Oreo cookies and coming up with ad campaigns for Gambler's Anonymous. Not of that was all that funny either.

But years later, I worked under a blog editor and news writer who completely warped my view on what living the life of a journalist could look like. As a good reporter should, she had her finger on the pulse of everything going on in the city, but when the story merited it, (which was often) she slipped a joke in. Maybe several. She didn't take everything so friggin' seriously.

Not only that, she loved math jokes and general nerdery, and was a die hard fan of TV. This floored mostly because I'd never really heard anyone openly admit their love of television without fear of being shunned.

I told her I wanted to write about Oprah, and her response was, "Oprah's a goldmine." She let me. I couldn't believe someone was actually allowing me to take the "Oprah beat."

Ok, so writing about Oprah isn't "journalism." I'm not arguing that it is. But no one told the journalism students of 10 years ago that this is the kind of writing life one could have. It was such a surprise.