Through the Eyes of a "Journo" (Lecture 1)

When I first received my acceptance letter from The University of Queensland and became a student at the School of Journalism and Communication, a great swarm of thoughts and emotions raced through my mind. Excitement, anxiousness, anticipation... and that's only to name a few. I came into that first lecture with a fair few ideas about what I'd be doing in the course. Assessment items were the least of my worries at that point in time, but if I were to be asked what I expected the first assessable task to be, there was no chance I'd have guessed that blog writing was the correct answer. Sure, it's obvious we'd be doing something social and engaging, especially in this modern world of rapid technological growth and development, but a fun assessment task at university? Amazing, though certainly unpredictable. So, as I sit here, attempting to recline back and relax in this particularly uncomfortable desk chair that I really do need to replace as soon as possible, I can only think that, as of now, I'm a journalist. Well, "journo" is the world the cool people say, so I'm more than likely to prefer that term from now on. I understand that journalism is not the easiest career track to make it in, and that everybody else in the course could well become competition in a few years' time, but this does not deter me from journalism at all. If anything, it makes the journey that much more intriguing for this particular journo.

Keeping with the words of one Dr. Bruce Redman, "[I am] the journalist". I am not a journalist, but rather, the journalist. Obviously, this quote has more to do with the fact that as a student of JOUR1111, it is already my duty to approach my lectures and tutorials with an eager, inquistive and determined mindset. It does not involve mean being the "only" journalist alive, of course, which would be taking a simple quote and breaking down the individual terms (in this case the word "the") in the most analytical yet concise manner. I find this quite fascinating, admittedly, because I believe that this is exactly what journalists do. We analyse the written and spoken word. We take note of what we see, hear or read, and we use those words specifically to convey meaning, to tell a story. We use simple terms, and intertwine them into an intricately woven text known only as "the truth". In this way, I can tell that it only took one fifty minute lecture to prove to me that journalists are possibly the most poorly represented people in the world, and knowing media representations of social groups, cultures and individuals in the present, that is definitely saying something. No, not all journalists are desperate-for-a-dime liars. In fact, I doubt many of them, in any at all, actually truly fit into that stereotype. Journalists, in my opinion, are more like present historians. After all, we are the people who note the first records of what will eventually become lost in the unchanging past. Historians, as such, are essentially backwards journalists, writing stories that were released any number of days, weeks, months or even years ago by journalists. Now, I do not mean to poke fun of historians in any manner, because I'm sure they mean well, but the point still stands. I have learned in my first ever JOUR1111 lecture that honesty is certainly a virtue among journalists. It is a treasured value, and not unlike every other job in the world, there is a clear code of ethics that journalists follow. 

These are the words of Nathan Alexander.