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| Stacy St. Clair is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. She graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism in 1995 with a degree in print and digital news (formerly called the news editorial sequence). |
Dear ONA,
I’m told I should write this essay as if I were sending advice to my 20-year-old self. I hesitate to do that.
Because I don’t want to scare her – or any other J-School student -- away with the dark side of 21st-Century journalism.
The road ahead isn’t easy for the Old Me or her classmates in the news-editorial sequence. She’ll see her own newspaper go into bankruptcy protection and other storied publications fold. Time and again, she’ll watch talented journalists pack their desks after being laid off but it will never get any easier. And she’ll worry endlessly about what happens to democracy without a free and vibrant press.
It’s not the journalistic utopia the Old Me imagined in 1995, but I would never tell her that.
Because, God help me, I want her to stick with it.
Because, even with the incredible heartbreak, it will be an amazingly fulfilling ride.
