Planning for a paradoxical future
By Melinda Dudley
June 10, 2007 9:17 p.m.
I’m pretty sure working at the Daily Bruin was simultaneously the best and worst job I’ll ever have.
In three short years, I went from lowly News intern, to student government beat reporter, to assistant News editor, all the way up to managing editor ““ No. 2 in the entire operation.
As managing editor (or “managing predator” as the sign in my cubicle says), I enjoyed almost unlimited “because-I-said-so” powers, something that will take decades, at best, to recover from in my future endeavors.
As I’m shopping for a new, fancy-schmancy business casual wardrobe, bemoaning trading in my Rainbow flip-flops for the more professional yet uncomfortable heels, I figure you really can’t beat the Daily Bruin’s dress code, which is pretty close to “don’t show up naked.”
A past photo editor would frequently work his days in the office clad in nothing but beer logo-emblazoned pajama pants (on one occasion, with “Get Your Tickets to the Gun Show” written across his chest).
I’ve mastered the fine art of jaded sarcasm (which is how you could always tell when I wrote the editorial).
Perhaps the best thing about The Bruin is going home at night knowing that what you’re doing is a public service for the greater good.
You aren’t just in it to make money (we barely do anyway), you’re in it to provide information to the public, to hold governments accountable, to further democracy, and a whole bunch of other lofty, feel-good ideals.
By far the worst thing about working in journalism, in the News section in particular, is the ever-present, soul-crushing, panic attack-inducing fear that news is happening right now and you’re missing it and hence, you’re a failure.
Whenever I check my e-mail or read the headlines after even a few hours away, I always refer to it as “making sure the world didn’t blow up while I was gone.”
There is no such thing as a day (or a minute) off. It doesn’t matter if you have a midterm the next day when UCPD uses a Taser on a student in Powell Library. Just when you think you’re going to Buck Fitty for a sandwich after the UCLA football victory over USC, you’ll find yourself collecting your trusty tape recorder and reporter’s notebook to cover the victory riot instead.
On a similar note, you were there for all those events everyone else will remember as part of their college experience, except you were covering them. ASUCLA should’ve made a “UCLA Beat USC And All I Got Was This Lousy Excessive Force Investigation Against the LAPD!” T-shirt just for me.
There’s no such thing as a vacation in journalism either. One summer, when I went to San Francisco with friends and missed a day of production, I tracked a special route home between Starbucks cafes with Wi-Fi, so I could edit en route.
This was the same vacation where a member of USAC woke me up at 8:02 on a Saturday morning “just to chat.”
After a while, you realize that you talk to sources on your beat and your favorite media relations drones more often than your friends or your family.
Being a member of the media also means being politically emasculated ““ agony for a wonky politics junkie like myself.
I owe a lot to The Bruin, which prepared me extremely well for a future in quite possibly the worst industry I could be trying to start out in.
It’s no secret that the print newspaper industry is going down the toilet ““ everyone is firing instead of hiring, cutting costs and jobs left and right.
After applying for newspaper internships this year, I think I got more letters saying that publications had to cancel their programs due to budget cuts than I did outright rejections. Last month I turned down a job offer because it paid less per hour than I currently make through work study.
Looking for an entry-level reporting position means fighting for a position where you work the worst hours, for the worst wages, and have to move to a podunk place you’ve never heard of to work for a paper of similar acclaim.
And I’m prepared to love hating it.
Dudley was the 2006-2007 managing editor. She’ll be in Indianapolis this summer as the Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information Intern for the Society of Professional Journalists.
