By Katie Meyer
After this issue of The Fordham Ram goes to print, I’ll be one newspaper shy from the end of my official tenure as an editor. For me, and for The Ram’s other graduating seniors, this marks the near-end of an era.
It means the end of late Tuesday nights in McGinley basement. The end of the mad rush to finish last-minute articles. The end of the (losing) battle against our office’s hopelessly stubborn printer.
The end of wracking my brain at three in the morning for a perfect headline. The end of looking at a fresh stack of copies of The Fordham Ram on Wednesday afternoon and thinking, with satisfaction, I made that.
I have been an editor at The Fordham Ram since the winter of 2013 — close to three years from today. I am incredibly proud of the work my co-editors and I have done in that short period of time. It has sometimes been frustrating, it has often been tiring, and God knows I have spent more hours in the McGinley basement than I care to count. But it has always, always been worth it. And that is primarily because of the incredible amount these three years have taught me, both about being a journalist and about interpreting the world in all its complexities through writing.
So I ask myself, what has come of those years, those dozens of articles and the endless interviews, meetings, hastily scratched notes and frantic emails? What have I learned from all this? Every time I ponder that question, I keep coming back to one basic lesson: I have learned how to find the truth.
It sounds counterintuitive to say that different people have different truths. The truth should stand apart, absolute and immutable. But I challenge you to interview a student activist and then a school administrator on the same issue, and say that they don’t both have a valid point. The truth is never a single account, but an amalgamation. To find it is to weigh facts and feelings and implications, to evaluate biases and motivations, and while doing this, above all, to stay impartial.
This lesson is one I believe can also apply and indeed should apply to all aspects of life beyond the world of journalism, because it is becoming harder and harder to decide the truth for ourselves.
In today’s media landscape, there is more available content than with which we know what to do. It bombards us, coming at us in the form of headlines, snappy quotes and pictures that jump out at us as we scroll habitually through our Facebook and Twitter feeds. It is easy to believe, when exposed to this volume of information, that we are learning more, absorbing more and educating ourselves about the world. But often, we are simply forming opinions based on too little information.
It is well-known that our social media feeds are tailored to our specific interests, based on our prior activity and proven preferences. By virtue of algorithms choosing much of our content for us, we are inundated with viewpoints with which we already agree, and it becomes far too easy to become complacent in our views. Instead of forming our own opinions, we fall in line with dominant rhetoric and neglect the other side of the coin. Rhetoric, however well-intentioned, is rarely balanced.
To counter this reality, we must consciously and consistently seek to learn more, to see the entire picture. We should aim to reject vitriol and indignation and partisanship. No situation, unfortunately, is ever black and white, and if something ever seems outrageously wrong, pause and look further before making a judgement. The world is never quite as crazy as the headlines make it seem.
This is a simple concept, but one that I have had to constantly keep in mind during these last three years. In that time, I have striven to report both insightfully and accurately, and I can only hope that I have succeeded in becoming a reasonably qualified journalist. But any achievement I have made or lesson I have learned, was not mine alone; I cannot end this article without thanking some of the people who have been so essential in my time on The Fordham Ram.
First, I want to thank Kelly Kultys, who graduated last year and is already doing incredible work reporting in Virginia. Kelly is the first editor I ever had, and was the first to show me what it means to be a journalist. I want to thank Laura Sanicola, The Fordham Ram’s current, incredible news editor, and one of the first assistants I ever had. I have watched her grow from an inexperienced freshman to a force to be reckoned with, and I learn from her work every day. I also want to thank two members of our editorial board, Chip Frerich and Sydney Keen, who, whether they know it or not, keep me sane. And finally (although there are many, many others who deserve thanks as well) thank you to our editor-in-chief, Joe Vitale. I have worked with him for all of my three years on staff, and together we have spent many egregiously late, sleep-deprived nights making sure we, The Fordham Ram, get it right. This may not always happen, but we will never, never stop reaching for that ideal.
