How I got started at The Daily sounds like a joke. After applying to join my freshman fall, I was overwhelmed by the maze of Slack channels and onboarding to-do items that I simply ghosted.
But by freshman winter, desperate to return to writing, a hobby that had accompanied me through my teens, I made some impromptu submissions to The Daily via email. From there, I fell in love with reporting on the arts, and my passion never subsided.
I’ve told this story to many of the staffers I onboarded as Editor-in-Chief. The moral of the story is that no matter how unconventional their starting point is, they can always find a place at The Daily. There is just one caveat: you have to be open-minded about where the experience takes you, and you have to work hard along the way.
Journalism is an adventure, and the key to the ride is saying “yes” to anything that comes at you. As an Arts & Life staffer, I wore many hats depending on where the section needed me: the theater critic, the food reviewer and the music reporter delving into the connection between attendance and the rise of Taylor Swift classes at Stanford. In writing reviews, I learned the value of speaking my mind honestly and fairly, “punching up” instead of “punching down”; when reporting, I learned to listen and let my sources’ voices shine. (I took saying “yes” to heart, so much so that once, to interview a muralist, I mounted five levels up a scaffold without a blink)
Once I began to report on a greater variety of news, the experience was beyond anything I’d ever imagined. My favorite article, where I profiled a Stanford professor and his co-lecturer, an inmate in San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, was never published because the latter did not want publicity while he fought his court battles. I remembered waiting for his 15-minute calls from the prison phone system and filling up pages of my reporter’s notebook with details about his life: What does your cell look like? What did you have for lunch? What inspired you to write poetry? My heart was racing as I realized I was venturing into a new world, and that, with my words, I could repaint it for hundreds to see.
What kept me going in journalism was precisely this feeling: that I had made a difference. Still to this day, nothing compares to the excitement of finding my article in the email newsletter. But what’s even more rewarding is when a source emails me and says, thank you, my story would not have been heard without you, my community’s story would not have been heard without you.
What has kept me going in The Daily has been the people I’ve met and the sense that I mattered to them. Every article I write is met with words of encouragement; the “constructive” always comes before the “criticism.” And if you are dedicated, you will become an essential part of the community. The Daily is one of the few places at Stanford where hard work is always rewarded — maybe except for that one source who just refuses to email back — and possibilities are endless. You can walk in a blank page, and when you walk away, you notice that the people you worked with and the stories you’ve heard and told have left indestructible marks on you. Your takeaway is a whole world.
Recently, I have found myself increasingly in awe of the idea that The Daily always lives on. I remember the moments when I would be the only one in the building, publishing articles after midnight. I would often look around at the cozy clutter around me and marvel, “wow, this is all ours.” But soon, I realized that I was wrong. We are merely a part of The Daily’s long, long life. One of the “aha” moments came during alumni reunion weekend, where I met some that wrote for The Daily as early as the 1960s. Their eyes still lit up when reflecting on the frenzy of producing a daily print paper, or the adrenaline rush of competing with the Daily Cal in Ink Bowl. One came up to me and said, “I’ve been so fascinated by The Grind (The Daily’s youngest section, dedicated to creative nonfiction). It did not exist back when I was here.”
In a few years, who knows what more the young bright minds that make up The Daily will bring to the table. Times are changing for journalism, and The Daily will change with them. But what will stay constant is the waves of passionate writers that walk into the building like “blank pages,” and walk out determined to make a difference.