The Lattice Work of Cconscious

Yesterday M. Shannahan came for a talk. Yesterday I was awake until 3 am, studying for a test and scrambling to find lost documents I ultimately hadn't lost at all. That same day the Daily Campus staff, slogged out of the Dog Lane offices at 4 am. Mrs. Shannahan however did that long before any of us had to get up at ungodly hours.

I come in late from studying and my roommate whispers how lazy I am that I am still sleeping in, when she's slept a fullnight.

I must confess it was nice to hear the voice of a fellow journalist. One of the biggest problems of the internet is where to go and what to see. It's much like life infact, we can't see it all. But we can and we have to see most of it, because we are peoples eyes and ears.

As journalist in the internet age you don't often get to hear your own voice. If you choose to be a journalist. If you are a paid blogger for a newsmedia outlet of of the era of the independent, you face and name is plastered everywhere. Somewhere now someone is writing the news, and somewhere someone isn't.

I admired her bravery for taking a new path in her career. Something I would do with heady enthusiasm. I also like that she was honest that intially it was lonely. What struck me most, besides her offer for an internship, to which I can't afford the gas.

What she said next stuck to me like glue, when I wanted to be teflon. The missing journalists. What I went through in my first professional journalism experince only echoes that. The newspaper the Chicago Tribune owned us, then they foreclosed upon us and sold the interest of our company to another. My summer was one spent surrounded by fear. Three early retirment and switching career send off parties were given. I wondered if this meant I could be easily hired. I felt bad for them, and for the termination of my pay. Eventually Gannett Company Inc, that media or media titans acquired us. Or would have

But Gannett didnt get us. That summer the people of the newsroom formed a union to fight back. They put it this way, "The agreement was terminated following an arbitrator’s ruling last month that Tribune could not sell the company unless the buyer assumed the existing UAW contract as a condition of the sale, which Gannett declined to do. The contract covered certain editorial employees at The Advocate."

Everyone thought they were safe. Now they are a Hearst Publication, with half the staff of the news and entertainment department. More people doing less things, when there is more than ever news to uncover. But this isnt a lament about less journalists in the workforce, with no one competient replacing them. This is about the news that doesn't get covered, all those stories that never get looked into, until finally it's months or years later, a some woman at a local newsdesk opens with we bring this tragic and breaking news to you tonight. Then we blame whoever could have prevented it.

Journalists names are not to be included in this. No one blames people that they don't think would have been there. Dont tell me it had to be this way....she didn't. I did. It has to be this way...for now.