So you’re a journalist?

I have no intention of working as a journalist after graduating from Sinclair Community College, yet here I am in my third quarter of journalism classes, and I also work as a news editor for the college paper. Does the writer protest too much?

To the contrary, I entered into my study of journalism knowing all along that I never intended to pursue that profession. I came into journalism classes on the advice of a friend who once worked as a journalist and who rightly recommended journalistic writing as a way to build more general writing skills. He was right, and I am grateful for his advice.

Secondarily, I entered into my study of journalism because many of my writing interests closely parallel journalism. Best described, my non-fiction writing interests are investigative and perhaps the only difference between the writing I want to do and journalism is my continued skepticism over the idea of journalistic objectivity.

Nevertheless, the things I am learning studying journalism are proving invaluable to me as a writer. The succinct nature of journalistic writing is helping to strip the unnecessary words from my writing in general. The investigative nature of journalism is helping me learn how to gather, validate and write about facts.

I believe that my journalistic experience will inevitably result in my being a more developed, more mature writer when I am finished. Perhaps, somewhere in the process, I will be able to distill out some essence of journalism and make it mine, but the results of that process I cannot yet see.