Coming into Journalism 200 in January, I thought journalism was just another basic English class where I had to write papers. Now that this class is coming to an end, I realized that I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Over the past 16 weeks I have learned that journalism takes certain skills to master and is the foundation of how outstanding news reporting is done today.

In Principles of American Journalism Stephanie Craft and Charles N. Davis state, “The facts should get in the way of a good story. Journalism requires more than just merely reporting remarks, claims or comments. Journalism verifies, provides relevant context, tells the rest of the story and acknowledges the absence of important additional information.”

Great news contains all of these components. At the end of the day people want to hear about the facts of a situation and then worry about all the additional information later. It’s also key for journalists to always tell the truth and show that their sources are always reliable. Consistency is the key to success and one mess up can possibly ruin a journalist’s career.

Before I just thought of the news as a waste of time and people would make a bigger deal out of non-important stories in order to get attention. Now I realize that there is a plethora of journalists in the world that take their job extremely seriously and go through the rigorous process of reporting the facts that the public deserves to know.  I certainly respect how the news is told and what it represents because of the information that I have learned throughout the duration of this course.