(Depending on your view, the senior goodbye columns that tend to populate student newspapers this time of year are fine or an abomination against the basic tenets of journalism. Or, in some cases, both.)
One of the best resources online for student media stuff, student journalism and generally keeping up with anything related to journalism at the college level is Barbara Allen’s College Journalism Newsletter.
(Thanks to some recent sponsorship, she’s taken down the paywall, but as a continuing paying customer, I have to say, I get far more out of her wisdom than I pay for.)
Allen’s look at student media this week included her thoughts on the traditional “senior columns” that graduating student media staffers write in the final issue of the paper:
I always have a complicated reaction when I read them, but this semester, something finally became clear.
The curmudgeon in me: “What value do these columns have to the community or audiences?” The momma bear: “What’s the harm in these hardworking students finally just having a few column inches of fun?”
What finally struck me this year has been hiding in plain sight all along: These columns provide incredible insights into precisely why students value student media.
<SNIP>
My call to action for you this week, whether you’re running a student newsroom or lecturing to classrooms or running an entire journalism department: What about your student media program is revealed when you read between the lines of these student farewell columns? And how can you synthesize that information for future recruitment, talking points, mentoring and classroom lessons?
I’ll get to that last paragraph in a subsequent post, but today I wanted to commiserate a bit with Allen over her “maybe yes/maybe no” vibe when it comes to these kinds of things.
I also want to offer your students a chance to kick my ass all over the place.
Personally, I have no problem with these “goodbye” columns. The students who write them work for little to no money, work way too many hours not to be in violation of some sort of forced servitude law, get constantly beaten up in the world of public opinion for minor errors and generally have a decent portion of the soul eroded through this “extra-curricular activity.” If they want a chunk of newspaper space or a spot on the website to say their peace, I’m a big fan.
However, I’ll challenge the group of students building theirs right now to do them better than the seniors have in the past. If they do, I’ll feature their pieces on the blog. I’ll also gladly submit to any reasonable request they have of me (public decency and libel laws still apply. Oh, and I’m not writing your senior thesis for you…)
Here are the three points of this challenge:
STOP BEING SO PREDICTABLE: If there’s one thing that drives me nuts about these things is that they are so generic, I could write them in my sleep. It took all of about 20 minutes to create this “Madlibs” version of the typical senior goodbye column:
If you really learned so much at the paper over the course of your college career, consider demonstrating it by doing something engaging and special. At the very least, make your piece somehow different from the other six “goodbye” pieces that are running right next to yours in the paper.
Prove you’re better than the script of a B-movie horror flick and do something that doesn’t have the words “generic” and “cliche” written all over it.
ESCAPE FROM PERSONAL PRONOUN HELL: It isn’t easy to write a piece about yourself without being self-referential. That said, as much as this piece is for you, it’s also for other people, so try to find a way to cut back on the uses of “I” and “me” and “my” in here.
On a lark, I pulled the first three paragraphs of the last three of these “send off” pieces available on various student media outlets. Self-referential pronouns (I, me, my etc.) accounted for about 12-14% of all words used there.
It’s not always easy to cut back on these, and there’s no shame in being personally reflective in a piece like this. However, when you sound like Donald Trump writing his autobiography while on a meth bender, you really need to reconsider your approach to all this.
MAKE YOUR MEMORIES MEMORABLE (IN A GOOD WAY): As we mentioned in a previous post, a set of “goodbye columns” can be memorable for all the wrong reasons. What we’re talking about here is leaving behind something wonderfully memorable.
As someone who writes a ton of copy for various platforms, I’ll be the first to admit that not every day is filled with brilliance and not every missive should win a Pulitzer. Some pieces are good, others are like the “get me over fastball” that just has to be in the strike zone somewhere and at least a few are wince-worthy duds. It’s the normal curve of writing a lot.
However, you only get one shot at this. It’s your staff goodbye, your senior “bon voyage,” your one golden moment in the sun. Make it something epic and special in a way that the rest of us can feel it, too.
One of the best things that can be said of a well-reported and deftly written obituary is that people who read it learn about someone in whose death they wished they’d gotten to know in life. That is the thing the piece you are writing right now should provide for your readers.
Sure, the people who know you best will get a lot out of the stories you tell and the memories you share, but people who DON’T know you should find themselves enamored with your tales and desperate to connect with this newsroom you describe.
Give this thing one good swing and make it count. I can’t wait to see it.
