History and journalism seem to go hand-in-hand since journalists write and archive history, but what most people don’t realize is that journalists have a huge effect on how history plays out.

While many things are going on in the world, journalists are the ones who inform people about what those things are. Journalists can “set the agenda” and stand “up to countless villains” while putting “themselves in harm’s way” according to Mightier than the Sword written by Rodger Streitmatter. When they do this, they are able to portray themselves, the subject, and the audience as a certain character that may or may not be playing a positive role.

From those different roles, they can energize and move people, hurt and anger people, or inhibit people from doing things. These different characteristics can be seen as protests, propaganda, or celebrations that have been played throughout history. Journalism has a lot of power since they can cause people to do these things just by informing them in a certain way.

From the Pew Research Center, a study done from 1985 to 2017 exhibited up to 89% of U.S adults believe that “criticism from news organizations keep political leaders from doing things that shouldn’t be done.” In this sense, journalism has a strong presence with people and that they work as a check and balance with the government. With this type of influence, history that may be occurring at the moment can change in an instant if journalists portray events in a specific way.

I’ve always heard about the Daily Illini, but have never read a publication from them before. I didn’t know the faces of the writers or the work that went into writing for the university newspaper.

The first day I started working there, we went straight into a meeting. I was just hired along with two other students to write for the Features section and wasn’t exactly sure what that would mean.

We ended up doing ethics training as well as tips and tricks on how to write better. That itself took an hour and half before we actually got to talking about pitching ideas for stories and selecting the stories we would write for the coming week. Once we selected out stories, we got to leave, totally 2 hours on the first day.

When selecting a story to write, Cashmere Cat caught my eye. It was my friend’s favorite artist and he would play his music all the time. I was able to decide if I wanted to write a preview or a review on the story and chose to do the review.

I went to the show early from 8:30PM for the opener and left around 1:30AM through the main show. It was a total of 5 hours of standing, listening, dancing, and taking notes. My story was due the next day and was rushed to meet the deadline.

I finished writing the story after figuring out each song that was played at the show and making sure the timeline was correct.  It took about 2 hours to figure that out and to write and edit the review. I was very proud to see it on the Daily Illini.

The following week, I went in for another hour of the meeting where we pitched stories once again and this time I chose to write about I-Guides. I asked around to interview past I-Guides and I-Guides from this year and prepared questions.

I set up times to meet with them at the courtyard cafe and was able to receive a lot of information. I finished writing the story and enjoyed writing this article the most since I got to meet new people and like interviewing people. This added up to about 5 hours of organizing, interviewing and writing.

I thoroughly enjoy working here even though it’s only been a few weeks. I hope to continue working here next year.