Weblog for New Media Storytelling

Posted: 5:30 a.m. 12/7/01

Journo Me?

It's five o'clock on a Friday morning (and the regular crowd shuffl--wait, that's not it). I'm only getting around to this now because this week has been rather ridiculous. Web final due Tuesday; urban RPA final article and paper due Friday. The Web final took a little more time than expected, thanks to the good people at AT&T. I love them, I swear I do.

I am definitely looking for a career in online journalism, preferably in site design or information architecture for a newspaper site that needs improvement. So many newspapers create strong print products that are translated weakly on the Web. Many papers put a great amount of emphasis on the identity of their newspaper but forget that identity when they start building a Web site. This is a huge mistake. Online viewers need to feel the same identity pouring through in the look and feel of every page. I would love the challenge of duplicating and recharging such an identity.

The terrorist attacks and their aftermath have done nothing but reinforce my belief that I want to/should/need to become a journalist. On the morning of Sept. 11, I felt so helpless. I had moved to campus, but school and reporting for Medill had yet to start. Surfing the Web, I returned time and again to my favorite news sites and the site for which I had worked in the past. I really wanted to be there for them--to help, to be part of the reporting and producing effort.

I honestly believe that I couldn't be happy in any profession but journalism. Or rock and roll stardom, of course.

My courses this quarter, including New Media Storytelling, have been more enjoyable than any others I have taken at Northwestern. Maybe it's the relief of not trying to combine The Daily and classes, but I feel more comfortable and energized about practicing journalism than I have since high school.

Must stop writing and turn Springsteen up louder now. No sleep till Joliet! (Long story, but I expect to fall asleep on a pool table in Joliet by the end of the day. Amazingly, after searching Google, this link is the only one on the Internet to explain what the random connection my mind just made right now. I knew I put too many quarters in that video game machine ten years ago.) Lord, I need sleep.