Before deciding to major in Journalism at Red River College, my grasp of the profession was limited. My opinion was based off news sources like Entertainment Tonight, US magazine, and The Stonewall Argus. I didn’t come to Creative Communications to pursue a career as a journalist, unless I was to be on TV, of course. To me, being a journalist just meant you reported on the facts, whether that meant a celeb break up, a murder, a drug bust, or about the thrilling Canadian government. And, pre-CreComm, that didn’t equate as much excitement or effort.

Boy was I wrong. 

I don’t usually like to define something by what it isn’t, but I’d like to clear up the Bradshaw myth.

As a typical teenage girl, I watched all the Sex and the City seasons to the point of reciting them in my sleep. Backwards. In Parseltongue. And I’ll admit that watching Carrie Bradshaw sit comfortably in front of her Mac computer, sipping on a Cosmo, jotting down her thoughts on love and sex, whilst being able to afford 100 pairs of shoes that run $500+ a pop certainly made journalism look gooood. Like, really good to a materialistic 16-year-old girl with no expenses and ample minimum wage spending money. 

Bradshaw let her viewers believe that journalism was relaxed, which it rarely is. That it pays the big bucks, which, unless you’re a big-time on-camera reporter, it likely doesn’t. She conducted her method of journalism by interviewing within her circle of friends, which I’ve learned is not the way to go about covering a story.

Rarely in Sex and the City did Bradshaw mention deadlines, editors, and finding a different angle for her topic. Three things which I think are very important in being a journalist. 

Being a journalist is being passionate about portraying proper and important information to the public. A large part of journalism is taking direction from your editor, meeting extremely (almost wildly) strict deadlines, and finding a different way to look at every story. Being a journalist is being a story teller. To get the good quotes and vital context for an article, a journalist can’t be afraid to approach multiple, random (but relevant) groups of strangers for different opinions, expertise, and information. 

A journalist’s job is never over. This is what I’ve come to love most about the profession, though. On one day, you can spend a couple hours poring over websites and keeping your ear out for the next breaking news to write about or compile story lists for writers. Then scrounge up contact information and conducting interviews, doing research on your article’s topic, writing a 500ish word article, and submitting it to your editor or editing your writers’ work. 

Then the next day, it starts all over. I didn’t think this kind of cycle would be something I would like, feeling like I never really made progress on something. But the excitement of something new every day attracted me, rather than put me off.

Words that Murray Burt said in a presentation at the Irish Club last spring stayed with me, especially when I think about progress as a journalist.

“The best journalists make a conscious effort to make changes to bad policies or situations.”

Though he was talking more along the lines of ethics, I consider this in terms of progress as well. Burt attributes much of the success in Cairo to fair and effective journalism. And this success was not done overnight.

To juxtapose Carrie Bradshaw’s faux journalism with, what I feel is a proper portrayal, The Paper. This clip from the movie portrays the life of a newspaper editor (Michael Keaton plays Henry Hacket): an always-on-the-go guy, having 10 conversations at once, attempting to keep his staff under control, getting a newspaper to print, and trying to lead a personal life. These characters, to me, sum up a newspaper writers and editors.