What good is writing for the newspaper?

What good is writing for the newspaper? I’m going into my second year, in the middle of freshers’ week, and yet I’m choosing to spend my time writing my first article for the newspaper. So, to be honest, I too am asking myself the same question.

I could perhaps point towards the countless Warwick alumni who have gone on to lead the world of journalism in their careers. Maybe writing for the newspaper is good because you could become personal friends with Diana, Princess of Wales, like Jennie Bond the BBC’s royal correspondent. Or maybe because you want to become Tony Blair’s speechwriter like Philip Collins. Realistically though, I doubt that either of them knew writing at Warwick would propel them towards the lives they eventually led.

So, I guess I’m writing this because I was inspired by Rory Gilmore

As I wrestle with what to tell you next, I think I’ll let you in on a little secret. Over the summer, I shamelessly binged Amy Sherman-Palladino’s Gilmore Girls, and I was struck by the ambition, creativity, and introspection demonstrated by Yale student journalist Rory Gilmore. So, I guess I’m writing this because I was inspired by Rory Gilmore.

While that may sound silly, I think Rory Gilmore perfectly symbolises what it means to be a writer. On her third assignment for the newspaper, Miss Gilmore was asked to review a ballet. Yet this seemingly routine task, for someone so characteristically sweet, produced comments like “regretting how evolution had led man to stand on two feet because it led to this night”, “the roll of fat around her bra strap”, or comparing the lead ballerina to a hippo. Now that is the magic of writing.

When we write, we are constantly faced with the unknown: the unknown within us, the unknown in others, and the unknown in the world. In a few hours you have to turn a blank Word doc into something that is meaningful and true to you that you think others will find touching, enlightening, or inspiring. It is, in some sense, a peculiar leap of faith.

Whether it’s figuring out what you think about Trump’s diplomatic style, the importance of the free press on democracy, or solving the world’s most pertinent problems like whether finalists can go sharking in Kasbah, writing gets to the heart of who you are and what you think. That blank Word doc has to go from some vague reaction to a defensible 700 words that you would be happy for the entire University to attribute to you. You discover contradictions, you will probably find convictions, on occasion some humour, and very rarely you might find in yourself an affinity for Gilmore Girls: a show you try to tell yourself you don’t like. I can at least attest to the last. But no matter what you find, I’m certain when that Word doc is full, you will have found something.

Writing doesn’t only ask us to venture into our unknown, but into someone else’s too, and momentarily see ourselves through them

Though, as the person who pushed me to write this said: “you write to be read”, and I would be telling a lie if I claimed I had not been thinking about your reaction to my Gilmore Girls confession, let alone your reaction to the entire piece. In writing that sentence, I have already had to imagine you: whether you laughed, rolled your eyes, appreciated the self-deprecation, or decided from the very beginning that I was jarring. Writing doesn’t only ask us to venture into our unknown, but into someone else’s too, and momentarily see ourselves through them.

Writing forces you into a peculiar double consciousness where you are both the person trying to say something and the reader wanting to hear something interesting. In so doing, you become engaged in one of the most profound and deeply human activities to have persisted through civilisations: translating yourself into ideas, emotions, stories, convictions, and humour, in the hope that someone else might understand you. Looking at my almost completed Word doc, I can tell you it is pretty fulfilling.

So hey, maybe that was the secret to our alumni Jennie Bond and Philip Collins’ success. Or maybe they’re just lucky buggers. But maybe that uncertainty is not a weakness in the case for writing; maybe it is the case for writing.