Journalism: it's who we are, it's what we do

Johnthan McFaddenBy Jonathan McFadden

The news is kinetic. It doesn’t stop and it never ends. The beginning of 2010 itself was a dynamic semester of newsworthy events for Winthrop.

When there weren’t ice storms blanketing the campus, there were fires practically burning down buildings. When renovations weren’t closing down residence halls, tuition hiked 4.9 percent and budgets were cut.

Who knows what fall 2010 will bring? Hopefully, it will be something exciting.

After all, Winthrop is a community - a body of people from different places and cultures, holding onto different beliefs and morals, studying different majors and aspiring to different goals.

With so much potential, there have to be dedicated individuals who are in the mix; those who desire to report the news and events occurring on campus as accurately and fairly as possible. This is where your friendly student journalists come into play.

Journalists are servants of the people. At Winthrop, it’s no different. We, at The Johnsonian, are your student journalists and we’re here for you.

We’re here to inform and not to judge. We’re here to report, not necessarily scathe (unless it’s on the opinion page). We’re here to help and not to hurt.

Last semester, such revelation became all the more apparent when, during the end of my sophomore year, I found myself breaking more and more into news writing.

To my surprise, something I was told would be a hard skill to master became fun and challenging.

Sure, sometimes the interviewing, information gathering and writing can be time consuming and physically draining.

Yeah, situations arise where one’s ethics and morals will be questioned.

And yes, times exist when your dedicated journalists make painful mistakes.

But, at the end of the day, all the sweat, tears and frustration constitute a labor of love.

The satisfaction of sniffing out and hunting down a story, constructing a readable masterpiece and then seeing one’s byline under that masterpiece is all worth it.

Now, entering my junior year and holding the assistant news editor position at The Johnsonian, I look forward to not only chasing after more stories and creating more masterpieces, but exploring the dynamics of newsroom management, investigative and, hopefully, enterprise reporting.

More importantly, I look forward to serving my dear community.

For those who may have read my love letter to Winthrop last year, you know Winthrop and I have had a rocky relationship.

But things are better for the time being. I’m ready to start anew. I’m ready to serve again.

Know something happening around campus you think is newsworthy? Shoot us an e-mail. Have an idea of your own you think is worth seeing in print? Don’t hesitate to contact us.

Want to write something? See us at a meeting: every Sunday at 8 p.m. in room 104  in the DiGiorgio Campus Center.

Want to make a complaint? Contact Claire Byun.