Young Journalist Motivated by Northern Star During Time of Change

I’ve worked for a small-town daily newspaper for about four months now after graduating from Northern Illinois University, where I was editor in chief of the student newspaper, the Northern Star. Since I’ve started, the editor who hired me quit for a job as a college journalism professor, a brand new publisher and our new editor eliminated nine positions within our company and our sole photographer announced her departure for a job in a family business in another state. I wonder who’ll leave or get laid off next on a daily basis.

In light of this, one might expect my views on the profession I just jumped into to be less than positive. The truth, though, is that I couldn’t be more excited about my job and the industry I’ve committed myself to. I’ve seen another side of things, a side that has shown me how powerful my role in the newspaper business really can be.  

When I found myself and my friends at the Northern Star in the middle of the story of the shootings that killed five fellow students last February, I knew I was in for a life-changing experience for two reasons: I was a student and I was also a journalist.

In the days following the shootings, I watched my fellow students’ pain- and anger-filled response to the mass media that flocked to NIU to cover our story. I understood their emotions as much as I understood that an event such as ours was something the country cared about and indeed had the right to know about.

Navigating this middle ground in so emotional a time is among the greatest challenges I’ve ever faced — as a person and as a journalist. I’ve never felt so connected to my immediate community at NIU and at the same time isolated from the larger community on a state and national level.

One thing I didn’t understand, at first anyway, was how much it meant to our fellow students when Northern Star journalists showed them that before the interview or the story, they too belonged to the NIU community. We felt and saw ourselves in the shoes of every person we spoke with about the shootings, and the process was a personal one. The same things that mattered to them also mattered to us, and that’s what fueled our questions and coverage.

I can’t help feeling that this experience constitutes the most important thing I’ve yet learned about newspapers: The work you do will only be as good as how much you care about the people you’re doing it for. And you’d better be doing it for the people in the community you care about enough to live and/or work in.

While the Internet and younger generations of news consumers are indeed changing the face of the newspaper business, communities throughout America will maintain a market for local news that only local newspapers can deliver.

Every time I hear someone talk about the sinking newspaper business, I brush it off, thinking instead about the ways in which I’m sure newspapers will remain invaluable. And how I’ll help them stay that way. It’s all a matter of perspective, really. Newspapers sustain themselves by serving the communities in which they operate. And when communities change, as they have over the last decade or so since the Internet began its rise, newspapers must change too.