Before I headed back to grad school I considered myself a writer. I freelanced for a monthly music magazine and a monthly alternative paper, but I didn't think I was journalist material. I mean, journalists had connections - they had a nose for news. I just wrote what I was assigned.That changed once I started grad school. There I was, living in New York City amongst daily newspapers and magazines galore. I learned how to get a good interview, how to do research, how to pitch my story ideas to editors, and write 5,000 word feature stories. I also learned how to read and analyze the news and how to blog about it. While in grad school I worked for a weekly trade publication, wrote daily stories for the website of a monthly magazine, freelanced for a few weekly city papers, and worked at a large daily newspaper.
I am a journalist.
I think being a journalist is more than posting your opinion about something on a blog. I hate the term "citizen journalists." These people don't follow any sort of rules or guidelines on their blogs. It's not that they're missing interviews or aren't writing in the inverted pyramid style. These people aren't even good op-ed writers. Or essayists.
Journalism is a trade. When I am writing a poem or a story I literally turn off the journalist in me and let someone else take over. That's why reading a novel and reading the newspaper are so different.
I'm not saying that being a writer is less than being a journalist, mind you. I would love to be able to write a novel, publish a collection of short stories, write poems that make other people think. But I'm good at the facts. I'll leave the imaginative creative writing to the writers.
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