The time I’ve spent as a columnist at the Emerald has been rewarding beyond belief. Through two school years now, I’ve riled, ranted and reported on everything I could possibly think of. From educational injustice and racial iniquity, to profiles on rehabilitated drug addicts and college students who still play Pokemon. Seems like I’ve seen a little bit of everything.
But today is my last column. After this, I will step away from my beloved space on the opinion page and serve as the editor in chief of the Emerald.
I’ll be in charge of the newsroom and ensure we meet the community’s interests, increase our online visibility, and teach one another what it means to be professional journalists along the way.
This will probably be the most rewarding and amazing experience I will ever have — but there’s just nothing quite like running a column.
Waking up in the morning to see how people received your latest piece, frantically clicking away at newsfeeds to find something that pisses you off enough to fill a 20-inch void on the opinion page, coping with the vicious onslaught of letters to the editor when you write something controversial — the whole experience is like none other.
A lot of people don’t really understand the place of the opinion page in the newsroom. Some see it as filler. Some see it as rubbish. And some people see it as a bunch of pissed of kids angrily blasting their self-righteousness into a void, hoping that someone responds to it.
It couldn’t be further from that. The opinion page of any publication brings forth something that no other page in a paper can. It brings about the perspectives of the time in their most uncut form.
A columnist is just as valuable to a newspaper as any other writer. Sure, most columnists don’t run around gathering interviews, and their obligation to say what they think kind of kills that whole … um … “unbiased” thing, but a columnist personally narrates the issues of the events of today and steers the discussions a community engages in. Columnists have a direct obligation to challenge their readers based on their perspectives, and they have to be willing to put their entire existence on the table.
Making it a much more personal, and occasionally self-defacing, form of journalism.
If any columnist doesn’t think they are a journalist, they clearly don’t understand their job. The point of our work is not soapboxing; it’s interaction. It’s taking that story the higher education reporter wrote about and breathing some personalized flare into it. It’s taking that story explaining the pending measures in an upcoming election and morphing it into a list of do’s and don’ts to persuade voters to make (what you think are) the right choices.
We are spokespeople for our beliefs and stimulators of debate.
My column, “In These Eyes,” has been the revolving point of my life for so long, it feels weird to say goodbye to it. I’ve learned so much not only as a writer, but as a person.
Mostly, what I’ve learned from this column, is that the most important thing anyone can have is access to their community. Whether that be through a student group, a fraternity, a club sport or a column, having the ability to call yourself a part of something and to be able to impact what it does is critical for any one who has ever been a part of anything.
The column has been my way of challenging this community to think outside the box, or introducing someone with an interesting story — but there is so much more I could’ve done.
Perhaps that’s the glory of it all. No matter how long you do it, how much experience you gain, you’ll never master the craft, and you’ll always seem to come up short of where you wanted to be. But it doesn’t hurt one bit. It just motivates you even more.
Column writing for this paper was a goal since my senior year of high school, and I’m honored to have spent so much of my time doing something I love so much.
The University community has been a blessing for me; I look forward to contributing to it as the liaison of the Oregon Daily Emerald.