Making the transition from young adult to professional… November 6, 2008

My checklist for moving from the world of a blithe university student into the realm of a hard-hitting, sharp journalist. 

1.) Tighten up the Facebook security:Gone are the days of posting photos of the weekend debauchery for all the world to see. Now, only friends can see my limited profile and only certain friends can access the less than PG rated version of my life on Facebook. I’m now vigilantly scouring my friends pictures for any straggler photos of myself in less than wholesome poses. My new Facebook mantra… Untag, untag, untag.

2.) Changeover my website: No more carefree, fun loving, personal website littered with four letter words. Out with the blogs about loosing my sobriety, loosing my keys and loosing my mind. In with the analytical, witty, intelligent blogs about news and current events. I am playing down my convivial qualities and playing up my polished, professional qualities.

3.) List reconstruction: Instead of going through the day writing down movies I want to ad to my rental queue, songs I want to download or quotes I think are funny, I am now keeping running lists of story ideas, professional contacts and potential employment opportunities.

4.) Real writing: Farcical emails, humorous posts on Myspace and lampooning status updates are no more. They’ve been replaced with writing daily NIBs (news in brief), constructing presentations on NGOs or foreign politics and punching out headline news bulletins.

Basically, I’m retuning my entire way of thinking. I am becoming a news junkie. I’ll live it, breathe it, devour it…

But I won’t loose my vivacious, sunny, jovial outlook on life, I’ll just store up my berserk self for the weekends (and I’ll be sure to keep the photographic evidence under cyber lock & key.)

Hear ye, hear ye… assemble for the journalistic revolultion. October 30, 2008

Gather ’round for I am forecasting my propulsion to fame in a writing revolution, by way of the ubiquitous blog. 

I’ll start with the question: What can blogs do for you? Is that the question? Or should the question be what can you do for blogs? I choose the former (mostly because the latter gives me a bit of a headache)…

Blogs have done everything from giving a voice to an anonymous London call girl (Belle De Jour) to allowing a business editor to break the story of a national economic down turn (Peston’s Picks).

So, what can it do for me? What can a completely inanimate non-object, fad-ish, ‘web log’ do for me?

Hopefully, being forced to post regular blogs about journalistic subject matter will spark off an effulgent train of thought in my mind. I will write some insanely brilliant, intuitive, luminescent piece about U.S. politics or shoring up the ever present humanitarian crises in Africa. Maybe I’ll break the next social networking revolution like “Twitter” (although, at this current point in time I am holding firm on my refusal to ‘tweet’.)

Upon publishing my iconoclastic blog, alarm bells will blare throughout the world of journalism, and I will immediately become highly sought after (think Christiane Amanpour). I will be whisked from country to country depending on where the next story lies and I will have money perpetually showering my feet. I will break an endless stream of stories which I will unearth with the help of my endless list of trusted sources. For said hard work, I will win numerous Pulitzer Prizes, Peabody and Payne Awards.

Now that I have broken the story of my own success I shall sit and wait for the calls to pour in… 

It shouldn’t be too much longer now…

Maybe I’ll grab some coffee…

Any second now…