#journalism problems

[shewhotellsstories]

Since this is the only social media platform disconnected from my professional life, just pondering something. Three weeks ago this publication I contribute to was begging us to submit op-eds. I decided I wanted to submit a peice related to the racism black female characters experience. The tone was a total 180 from the “please, we need op-eds” emails we’d all been getting. I wanna hope for the best, but the the silence is deafening.

[suckrfish]

I had to explain to my editors what was the Big Time, the pow wow at my school. I had to say pow wow and not a dance demonstration since there are no pow wow dancers coming and just California tribes dancing. Being the only ndn journalist at school is really bringing me down. I just want to be done with the semester.

[shewhotellsstories]

Since the vaccine side-effects have subsided I planned to finally binge Shadow and Bone tonight (I don’t like to taint first time experiences with sickness) but an expert I need to wrap up a story can only be interviewed at 8 am tomorrow. Nothing in life is fair. But then I guess I can use it as a reward for not putting off transcribing. 

[shewhotellsstories]

If anyone (kids or interested parties) ever reads my journals from the past year will they believe that any of this actually happened and I’m not exagerating the chaos factor? Between work and documenting for personal reasons the gist is, “how do you document real life when real life’s getting more like fiction each day?”

[tarragonthedragon]

i reached out to a friend on facebook for a comment on this story i’m wriitng and it’s only just occurred to me that there’s no way he’s gonna respond

because when a white girl you havent spoken to since primary school hits you up on facebook with a “hey! i know we haven’t spoken in forever, but...” the only conclusion you can come to is that they’re trying to sell you some essential oils

[emthought]

But like why does my insomnia have to flare up again on the night before the day before deadline (that's a confusing phrase), when I have next to none of my stories for the week written

[localdiscountgoth]

Journalism Problems

when you have so much freaking information you don’t even know where to begin.

[central-perkistan]

Hopefully this will be the last time I address this here

So if you follow me on any other social media, you know that I’m (well, the paper I work for) in the midst of a one-sided battle of wits against the general public of my town in regards to the local school district’s calendar for the next school year.

The gist of things is that the community at large is unhappy with it for personal reasons only, and they have misunderstood what the calendar will look like, so that’s making things worse.

We wrote an editorial (aka OPINION piece) and posted it on Facebook, and people got even MORE angry and started leaving a rash of 1-star reviews on the Facebook page because they don’t understand the difference between an article and an opinion piece.

So I worked on a more in-depth comparison study of the town’s new calendar to other local area calendars--I even used data that the paper had ten YEARS ago that backs up my study--in the hopes that the subject would finally be put to rest and some of the idiocy would be quelled.

I explained the three or four reasons that the school board gave as the rationale behind their discussion. I explained that the breaks are not being reduced to just one week, as many people falsely believed. I explained that, despite what many people seem to think, 99 percent of teachers are not actually against the change; because only 35 people out of 480 employees even bothered to give any feedback before the board adopted the calendar. I explained that the decision was based on data the school system already had, as people had complained that there was “no data to prove this calendar would be better.”

I did everything I possibly could to get people some information.

Did they actually read it?

NOOOO, people are still dumb and will still refuse to read anything other than the first blurb, which doesn’t explain everything, and it’s infuriating.

I just... I’m so sick of dumb people.

Read the fucking story before you comment on things on Facebook, okay?!