When I was a baby reporter, I was shocked to learn The Daily — which delivers incredible community reporting — is made entirely of a group of (well-trained) college students hooked together by a massive Slack, many email chains, a workflow manager with animated confetti and a lot of passion and hard work. The Daily, in all its glory, is nothing without the people who care to make it happen.
Joining The Daily is inherently temporary. It’s a four-year timeframe, max. I tried to make the most of my time here, doing everything from copy to arts and entertainment to managing roles. Of course I learned a lot, but unsurprisingly, working in whatever position wasn’t what made me feel fulfilled. It was the people I met and loved. Cliche, I know.
We feasted on vending machine snacks in the dead of night and went through an insane amount of Dum Dums. We shivered in the cold to get footage of community events, we queued for countless theatre performances to cover and we met at cafes to chip away at draft after draft after draft. The halls of the newsroom have heard me pour my heart out to friends between edit rounds. Even the long walk from the newsroom in Norris University Center to our dorms at 2 a.m. some nights felt more like an adventure when we were together.
Good people make good content. When The Daily works as a team, it’s beautiful. From the editors above that pitched in to help, to the hardworking assistants making things happen, to the devos that rose ranks, to all the reporters contributing quality reporting, to the communities we cover — it was always about the people.
My loved ones, in and outside of The Daily, kept me going. Keep people close to you and lean on them. Because while everything around you changes, they’re the one cherished constant.
The inside jokes scribbled on the whiteboards will get wiped away, and the purple couches outside the newsroom have been replaced. Each new round of editors adds to the mess of paper tacked onto the wall and tweaks the decor. Even the edit board masthead changes quarter after quarter, people coming and going and graduating and moving on. Being just a blip in The Daily’s history feels like it meant something big, despite the impermanence.
It was hard leaving The Daily. Even after swearing I was “retired” after my junior year, I returned in the fall as a video assistant to spend time with a close friend who was about to graduate early. The Daily has a unique pull, and the people who commit their time have a dedication like no other — just look at how many senior reflections are in this graduation issue.
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