To say this past weekend was a banner weekend for me is a gross underrepresentation. Never have I felt so proud to be a journalist.
I didn’t quite know what to expect going into the North Carolina College Media Association conference Saturday. I guess I just hoped to learn more about the industry, maybe network with professionals and get out of Elon for the day. I knew that I paid $30 to attend, and anything that involves my bank account getting smaller has my full, undivided attention.
So with fellow staff members Natalie Allison, Caitlin O’Donnell, Mary Kate Brogan, Al Drago and adviser Colin Donohue, I left for Winston-Salem State University at about 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning (for college students, this timeslot is torturous) eager to take in the sights.
We got there bright and early, signed in and took a tour of the newsroom of The News Argus, WSSU’s student paper. Looking at another college newsroom gave me a much greater appreciation of the resources we have available at Elon. While we have 20 or so computers available to us in our spacious Pendulum office, The News Argus doesn’t have that luxury. Four or five cubicles filled in a space that is shared with another department. It can’t be an easy place to produce a paper.
But they do a great job with the resources they have. With a staff of eight people, putting out a newspaper twice a month isn’t easy. Throw in the fact that they had to prepare to host this event, and major props are in order.
After listening to an opening session about political reporting, I went to a session on media law. Now, I’ve taken the course at Elon and consider myself fairly versed on the subject, but knowing the rules and regulations isn’t what makes media law so interesting to me. It’s the conversations you have discussing the issues with your peers. And who happened to be there? Staff members of East Carolina University’s The East Carolinian, who provided a recent case of media law fodder. I won't get into what their staff had to say (it's personal to them and within the confines of a closed space), but rest assured it was interesting to hear their explanation of the issue and how they handled the aftermath.
After that session, we headed to lunch (not really a fancy food fan, but the pasta was okay). After we pigged out, Roxanne Jones was our keynote speaker. Jones is most famous for her work as editor for ESPN the Magazine. Being that that is perhaps the second best sports magazine on the market (behind Sports Illustrated, in my humble opinion) it was interesting hearing what she had to say.
Then came the awards presentation. Now, I'll be honest with you. I knew I was nominated for sports writing for a piece I did back in November. Then-staff photographer Elizabeth Everett (who is awesome by the way) told me one day in passing that the staff really liked my article and voiced their pleasure at the previous night's budget meeting. For somebody that just got back into writing this past summer after a three-or-so-year hiatus, I was taken aback - quite pleased. As writers, sometimes we are our own worst critics (I'm bashing this blog post as I'm typing it). So it's always refreshing to hear somebody say something nice about our work.
So, I'll admit, from the time I find out I got nominated until this past Saturday when the awards were being handed out I had prepared myself with reasons I wouldn't win. Just so I could be okay after the letdown, I guess. It wasn't long enough (only about 600 words), there's only one source (but really, who else could I talk to?), Penn State is such a distant issue from Elon (even though I localized it early on). All these reasons to dis my own writing - something that has to be unhealthy for a journalist.
Awards are being presented to Pendulum people left and right. Natalie Allison and Caitlin O'Donnell take home first and second place, respectively, in the news category. Lauren Ramsdell gets first prize in feature writing, while Rebecca Smith takes home an honorable mention (I love her article. Go read it right now). Amanda Bender's sports design is number one. Al Drago wins second place in the photography category. The Pendulum, as should be expected, was cleaning up at the NCCMA awards.
Then came my moment of truth: sports. First of all, a complaint in how they do things. It is much more dramatic to say the article's title first and then the author's name when revealing awards, at any ceremony. They do it at the Oscars, the ESPYs and the VMAs, so it should be pretty much universal. Instead they went with a name-first approach that killed any sort of climatic sequence. I digress. Anyway, this excellent piece by Zach Horner got honorable mention. Third and second place went to writers at Guilford College and UNC-Asheville, who I'm sure are excellent at what they do. That left one spot left.
That's when I heard my name.
I had won first place. Wow. Humbled, to say the least. As Natalie and Colin (God bless them) whispered me a heartfelt congratulations, I immediately started to reflect.
A year ago, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I got back into journalism as a hunch. A last-ditch effort to find out where I fit in the communications industry. Now I was being honored for my work.
But more importantly, I had been at least temporarily freed from my own self-loathing. I now know that at least one of my articles affected readers to the point that it was awarded. That speaks to me. That tells me I have some kind of writing ability and makes me motivated to keep putting good work out there.
I don't write for awards. I write to tell stories, to convey the news in an interesting way and to reveal incredible things people had not discovered prior. But to be congratulated for my work at that level is unbelievable nonetheless. And I am so thankful to everybody at The Pendulum for giving me an opportunity.
I'm thankful to Anna Johnson and Sam Calvert for giving me the opportunity to get started this fall. Without them this doesn't happen. I'm grateful to Justin Veldhuis for presenting the Al Harris story as a possible story for that week and letting me jump on it. I'm thankful to have Zach Horner as my sports editor. I'm thankful to Colin Donohue for being an adviser that knows the business and can help us all become better at what we do. I'm thankful to Natalie Allison for giving me flexible office hours and our humor-filled trips to Acorn. I'm so pleased with Caitlin O'Donnell for hiring me as assistant sports editor.
But I'm most thankful of all for the fact I go to a university that doesn't censor its press. The Pendulum is so great because of the great people that work for it, sure. But the fact that no prior restraint is exercised by the administration ensures that the quality of the newspaper will continue to remain at an award-winning level.
As we drove back to good old Elon later that afternoon, I couldn't help but think how far I've come. How far, really, we've all come since The Pendulum came into our lives.
Thank you.