Reporting after a long hiatus

While you don’t have to have been a reporter to teach journalism, it doesn’t hurt.  Though it was a LONG time ago, I still remember my time at Montgomery Newspapers in suburban Philadelphia vividly: from the fun assignments like meeting interesting people for profiles, to the more dry coverage of late-night town council meetings.  But ultimately, covering education issues made me realize that I really wanted to teach, and so I went to grad school and put my reporter’s notebooks on the shelf.

Switching recently from teaching English to journalism has reawakened a lot of my old love for the trade, especially for the camaraderie of the newsroom as we work to make the paper perfect, or at least as perfect as it can be.  But until this week, I hadn’t written an article in over a decade.  It feels good to be accountable for articles this week, to put myself in my students’ shoes.

And I’m rediscovering one of the things I always loved best about reporting: that it gives you a reason to explore what you don’t know. You have an excuse to meet with complete strangers and ask them questions.  It’s an inquisitive and social process, a way of keeping tabs on the world around you.  Sure the technology has changed (I did my first-ever Skype interview today, and will do another one tomorrow), but old-fashioned conversation is still key.  Now that I’ve had a chance to revisit reporting, I have more empathy for my students, but perhaps some jealousy as well.

Jessica Nassau

Rockville High School

Rockville, MD