Why I want to be a print journalist

The essay that win me a spot to the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference...


Recently, a student colleague at The Daily Athenaeum interviewed me for an advanced reporting class. I guess my story – a Vietnamese student studying journalism at West Virginia University – sounds like an interesting feature to her.

She asked me basic questions: why I come to Morgantown, is it difficult to work as a copy editor, do I have American friends and so on. The assignment requires her to observe me for days.

Being a reporter myself, I tried to give her good quotes. After we talked for about an hour, she decided that was enough to write her assignment.

I realize she missed the real story: What motivated a Vietnamese student to study journalism in America? Why did I expend all of my efforts to learn copy editing, reporting and writing?

In his book, “Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction,” Jon Franklin wrote that most newspaper stories are “endings without beginnings attached” and that “they are not, in and of themselves, stories. They are, instead, tip-offs…clues to stories.”

I give much credit to print journalists. Not having the visibility power of a broadcast journalist, newspaper writers have to work a lot harder to keep readers’ attention. It’s difficult to convey emotions solely through words.

And yet, writers like Jon Franklin knew how to do it.

His masterpiece, “The Ballad of Old Man Peters,” is more than a story of a man who masters six languages. “It’s a powerful saga of human aspirations, of man against both himself and the world,” Franklin wrote.

Like Franklin, I want to be able to recognize stories in life and write them in a way that readers will remember, even after they put the newspaper down.

When I first came to the United States six years ago, the power of the American media – its role as an advocate for the community – sparked a passion for a journalism career. The current lowered public respect for the U.S. media cannot lessen all the sacrifices American journalists have taken to inform and protect people’s rights.

Working for a foreign media organization is the only way I can report on issues that are pertain to developing nations: corruption, poverty, AIDS, lack of education.

That has been my goal ever since.

Someday, I wish Vietnam would embrace press freedom, and understand that citizens have and need the right to express themselves.

After three years studying and practicing journalism, I realize news don’t always have to be bad. As journalists, we have the obligation to spread compassion, not skepticism. Stories about normal folks can also have a positive effect on a neighborhood, and make people realize that there are hopes – amid fires or disasters.

Why choose journalism?

There’s pride in seeing your byline every day, I admit. But there’s also pride in knowing that you can help somebody simply by writing. After reporting on Lund Family Center, a social service agency in Burlington, Vt., I received a thank-you card from a mother.

I love talking to people, listening to their lives and knowing how they overcome obstacles. I love deadline pressure, coming to work not knowing what will happen that day.

Because of the Internet, newspapers are struggling to keep circulation. But I believe no technology can replace the craft of reporting and writing. Readers will listen as long as we know how to tell stories.

While attending the Associated Press Diverse Voices workshop for student journalists in Cleveland, I found myself struggling to find the meaning of this profession.

My mentor, a photojournalist from AP Indianapolis, said to me and another student: “Journalism is not about winning prizes, it’s about recording people’s lives.”