Personal Narrative

What time is it? I leaned over to check my phone, placed on the other side of my concerningly long and messy desk. It’s 2:45 a.m I.S.T (Indian Standard Time).

 

Although this moment foreshadowed countless nights of the glaring light of InDesign open on my screen, this day was the beginning of my beautiful relationship with journalism. 

 

I opened my laptop, nervously contemplating whether I should turn my camera on or not and logged into my first 7th period class in the earliest hours of the morning. As a result of unforeseeable circumstances, my family had to relocate to Seattle during the pandemic. So as I sat in Mumbai surrounded by moving boxes, I began my American high school experience with no idea what to expect from a “journalism” class. As I struggled to stay awake at the time, I never anticipated just how much my time in Nordic News would transform my future prospects. 

 

My first year as a Nordic reporter was one of learning. I had never even heard of InDesign and Illustrator before they became my nemesis. I struggled with overwriting and underwriting, trying to figure out how much context the reader needed. I was forced to learn to focus my scope in reporting news articles. It was comforting to rely solely on the facts and statistics provided by the BBC, without the need to connect it to our community. However, as my Co-editor-in-chiefs repeatedly asked questions such as ‘how does this relate to Inglemoor?’ during pitching sessions that year. I learned that as a student journalist my duties were different from my favorite international correspondents. I had to let BBC cover the world news, because I had a better opportunity to report on local news. 

 

Although it took an entire semester, with this understanding I finally opened myself up to the intricacies of local reporting. I went from reporting on the pandemic, to writing my first print piece on the construction of the concert hall alone. Over the course of several days, I grappled with the challenge of eliminating unwanted white space on my page, adjusting my graphics to fit within the ink limit constraints (the precise details of which were unclear to me), and contending with frequent laptop crashes resulting from running multiple systems simultaneously. But at the end of the cycle, I was proud of the fruits of my labor — the article that was printed.

 

As we transitioned to in-person school the following year, stories from the previous years of our newspapers covering the hallway floors or collecting dust on newsstands crushed my expectations. That and the underlying apprehension of being the new news editor, forced me to learn everything I could about InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and how to edit over the summer. I spent hours watching videos of how to create different layouts, and how to make my leads better. I was worried about being unprepared for the year ahead, so I made my first section edits in pencil and always left edits with a "just my opinion :)" note.

 

However, as new reporters came up to me with queries on how to go about their first ever news article, I caught myself being able to give helpful and experienced advice. I realized that I had once been in their position, but had never had a person that could guide me. So, I started checking in with them once a week. We soon became a tight knit group, naming ourselves a dorky name, “News Gang,” and I was the leader. 

 

Not only did I come out of that year with a tremendous number of joyful memories, I also caught myself applying to write other sections as well. I grew to have a special liking for opinion articles. At first my drafts would always need rewrites. I came to be known as the person who would still be rewriting her article on our first late-nights, by the time most of our pages are finally being put together on InDesign. 

 

An exhausted announcement of “If anyone needs me I’ll be in the library, rewriting my article again.” became a usual at the beginning of our late nights.

 

The main problem I often had to overcome at the time was rambling, and organization. I often caught myself getting overly passionate and rather than having a formal tone, I personally attacked another opinion. To help me overcome this, I started creating loose outlines of my argument. In this way, my arguments became more structured, while continuing to have the flow that differs opinion articles from an argumentative paper. This worked so well for me that I got an honorable mention at the national JEA convention last year in editorial writing, and had one of my opinion articles presented at technology conventions. As co-editor-in-chief this year, I have provided my staff with a template of this outline, and am always enthusiastic to help reporters organize their pieces.

 

The transition from online to in-person school after two years allowed Nordic to start fresh. Unlike previous years, we started reporting underlying issues within the school community, like marjuana use and income inequality. We saw an increase in readers, and discussion. Through researching topics, interviewing people face-to-face, and working late nights, I developed the ability to pay more attention to people, what issues impact them, and how to best tell their stories. I felt the impact especially when at the National JEA conference, we received 7th nationally. This elevated our credibility in our district, but created more backlash from some administrators on articles criticizing their leadership. 

 

During my junior year, our ability to share stories was limited by our school district's communications department after we declined to provide our list of contacts for a crucial article, a standard ethical norm for journalists.To challenge the restrictions, we wrote an editorial and asked for a meeting to discuss our concerns. We were complimented for taking a stand, however many staff members at our school became hesitant to be interviewed, and our relationship with the district broke. This created an inability to get their perspective on key issues we reported on. 

 

As leadership of the paper was handed to my fellow co-editor-in-chief and I this year, we met with the new communications director to discuss the freedom of expression policy. We explained our hope for the policy to be updated to reflect the New Voices law and to ensure it’s clearly written that staff members have the right to talk to reporters about issues of public concern. We expressed that telling staff they can’t talk to reporters is a huge issue. It’s how coverups happen and allows for corruption when there isn’t transparency. Fortunately, we were met with enthusiastic agreement, and are now building a better relationship. We are once again able to ask for comments from the leaders of our district, and are often given leads that we are able to report on. 

 

The goal of running an ethical newspaper, whether that be by showing both sides of a story, or acknowledging when we made a mistake, is something we have strived towards and achieved under my leadership, and I am thrilled to see what more we can do for our community. I’ve learned to maximize our unique strength of reporting interesting local issues ethically.

 

To me, power is a zero sum equation. The political moves made by politicians aim to balance this equation, but are never the only variables. Journalists not only inform the public, but also empower citizens to make their voices heard in the corridors of power. I have always known that I want to work within the realm of government, but my time at Nordic News has shown me a future with journalism too. Nordic News has helped me become a responsible, scrutinizing journalist while also deepening my passion for politics. During my high school career, I have come to believe that most humans are gradually expanding their circle of empathy. Instead of our instinctive “us/them” labels, we are developing a sense of shared identity to all of humanity. Through future studies, and more hands-on experiences I am excited to plunge myself into a new chapter of my life to better understand our complex, interconnected world.