Oh, if I could go back in time, and whisper in the ear of my younger self during journalism school.
Not that I was busy screwing it up. Editor-in-chief of my college newspaper, graduated No. 1 in my class, won a bunch of awards, blah-blah-blah. (Related: Who is this Guy?)
But the traditional things that most journalism students think they SHOULD be doing — well, often those are seven separate kinds of wrong.
And there are other things Serious Journalism Majors scoff at, things that you actually should not only embrace, but hug tightly to your bosom.
So here we go with the Top 10 Myths of Journalism School.
Myth No. 10: Hard news is the only true love of a Serious Journalism Major
Sure, unfiltered Marlboros and Jim Beam come close. But nothing beats a scoop about an amazing scandal. You laugh at people trying to make the words flow for their feature story on dumpster divers, a story packed with all these photos, which are for nancypants who don’t have the stones to write more words.
Here’s the truth: hard news is all about news gathering and using the inverted pyramid, which is a horrible structure for any sort of writing and needs to be taken behind the barn and shot.
Hard news is worthy, and does the public a great service. Yet if all you do is hard news, you won’t truly learn journalism — or how to write.
Related posts:
- Why the Inverted Pyramid must DIE
- How to write KILLER headlines and hooks
- Why reporters love mayhem, destruction and FREE DONUTS
- The evil secret to ALL WRITING – editing is everything
Myth No. 9: Journalism school will teach you how to write
Once you get that pigskin from j-school, and land your first journalism gig — at The Willapa Valley Shopper or The New York Times – you’ll go home after 12 hours of banging on the keyboard to stay up past midnight, banging on the keyboard some more while smoking Gallouise Blondes and drinking cheap whiskey sours as you write (a) the next Great American Novel, (b) a Broadway play involving a debutant who falls in love with a struggling young reporter or (c) a Hollywood screenplay about a vast government conspiracy unraveled by an intrepid young intern at CBS.
This will be a lot of fun, and you’ll remember this as being the Best Thing Ever until you’ve been doing it for seven months and turning every draft of your extra-curricular writerly fun into three-point attempts. Also, you will miss this thing we call “sleep” and these other things we call “money in the checking account” and “a social life that does not involve typing on a keyboard chatting with a person who may, or may not, actually exist.”
