Journalism Student Hopes Official Newsroom Will Foster a News Culture

When you ask a journalist what to do in college to get experience for a future career, they aren't going to tell you to take Law of the Mass Media. They are going to tell you to work for the school newspaper.

The school newspaper is the first chance journalism students get to be part of a production cycle. Instead of sitting through lectures and taking quizzes, you're knocking on doors, doing interviews, and producing stories.

And the best part is, the cycle never stops. While in a regular class there are assigned quizzes and midterms that you know the dates of on the first day of class, in the newsroom, stories are constantly being written. As soon as you finish one, the next one is calling your name. Sometimes you are writing more than one. Bottom line, the school newspaper is as close as you can get to the real world of journalism at a university.

One of the biggest challenges at a school newspaper, and especially CSUDH's Bulletin, is the turnover of staff. At CSUDH, The Bulletin is still considered a class. Only a couple of students have been lucky enough to be involved for more than one semester.

Turning a student into a staff writer or editor on the paper is a tricky process, but one thing is for sure: allowing students to feel like they are a part of something bigger than just another class on their agenda is the best way to start.

The Bulletin is taking a big step in that direction when they will be receiving their very own space to be claimed as a newsroom. And while conditions won't be all butterflies and roses yet, considering the construction on campus and the sacrifices the campus is making as a whole in terms of space, the action of giving us our own space is a big deal.

Having a space dedicated to The Bulletin helps develop what The Bulletin really needs, which is a newsroom culture.

We will have space where we can go at any time to brainstorm on story ideas or do research for articles. The staff can also meet and collaborate on stories.

Having a room with our name on it also will give us some respect from other students, organizations, faculty, etc. on campus. And by giving us our own space, it might even get more people to recognize who we are and read our articles. The more people who read our work, the more people who might someday decide they want to be part of what we do.

My hope is that one day, freshman journalism students can walk into The Bulletin newsroom and be inspired to one day be a writer on The Bulletin staff instead of just treating it like another class they have to pass on the way to graduation. Getting a dedicated newsroom is the first step in that journey.

That is why, starting this Fall 2019, The Bulletin newspaper will be meeting in its own dedicated space on the third floor of the Library.