My desk! It gets REAL messy as
soon as I sit down at it. (click to enlarge)

This semester I'm both an editor and reporter for The Channels. I laugh at last semester when I thought being a reporter alone was stressful. People don't understand how intense working in this field of journalism is. I wouldn't be surprised if that's one of the reasons why journalism enrollment seems to be dropping at colleges across the nation, especially with amount of pressure on today's media. Heck, I didn't understand going into it!
The reality of journalism has struck me as clear as lightening illuminating the sky at night. The comments journalists receive are like strikes of lightening. Sometimes the strike is damaging; sometimes the strike is beautiful. But if you don't look at the strike, it's silent.
That is how I feel every single time I read the comments on articles that aren't so pretty. As an editor, I have the ability to see every comment that comes in from every article listed out right in front of me. Sometimes I don't get to debate seeing or hearing comments. No one likes to have their name in an article that makes them look bad. No one likes to read an article that isn't in favor with their opinion or their lives. So what do they do? They take it out on the reporter by degrading their work, their job, or who they are as a person.

Clearly we stress eat

This puts an enormous amount of pressure on reporters and editors to make sure everything written and published is accurate. Even if several sources were interviewed, even if every fact is checked for accuracy, even if every word's definition and every sentence's grammatical structure is fixed, there is nothing that can prepare a journalist for the brutal comments trolls leave on their articles.
When I say brutal, boy do I mean it. A professional, investigative journalist once told me the same day I talked to him that someone told him to kill himself by shooting himself in the head. He advised future journalists not to read comments.
However, it can be really difficult not to. I received my first degrading comment last week on an opinion column. Believe it or not, people will tell you that your emotions aren't valid and will try to correct your opinions as if they are facts even when you clearly state the difference of columns vs. news articles. Friday, I received a comment on a factual, breaking news article I wrote that told me I was wrong about something I already knew but didn't even write about. How productive.
The sad part is, most journalists take on the jobs they do because they are passionate about helping inform the public about perspectives on the world they maybe wouldn't know or consider otherwise. Yet, a portion of the public hates on journalists for trying to help because they confuse us with clickbait gossipers and don't take into consideration what a world would be like without us. Let me tell you, there would be a mass eruption of corruption. Journalists are the punching bags society takes out their anger on.
After getting upset at my first cruel comment, my teacher welcomed me to "the world of good journalists."

She went on to say that journalists who aren't afraid to talk about things are doing their job's right. The best journalists can receive the worst comments because their articles with new information offend know-it-alls.
I've become OCD in making sure every word I write is correct. I read articles over and over again before publishing them in order to reassure myself I've done my very best to not make a mistake because if I do, I will be heavily criticized for it.
Now that I'm an editor on top of being a reporter, I do this with multiple articles as well as my own. The pressure became heavier after becoming an editor and hearing Trump's "fake news" accusations and dealing with its consequences.
I'm glad that I've took on this experience of becoming an editor because it's giving me a full perspective on everything that comes with being a journalist. I'm learning a lot and am becoming more passionate about my career path because of it. However, I'm realizing that in the future I'd like to stick to receiving the pressure of my own stories because that within itself is more than enough.
Reporters get to go out there, talk to people, experience the world, and write about it. Editors are in charge of juggling multiple reporters and each of their stories, making sure they do their jobs right. Editors come up with, edit, frame, and publish stories, as well as write headlines, create budgets, and resolve any issues that come up along the way. Mix editing and reporting and you get pressure from every end of the newspaper aside from taking pictures.
The beginning of last week was extremely tough on me. The pressure became overwhelmingly real and catching up on everything after being sick for the second time in a month didn't exactly help. Wednesday in particular felt like everything went wrong even when I did my best to prevent it. Thursday I was at school for 14 hours straight (8 a.m to 10 p.m.). I had two classes, responsibilities to take care of from both my editor and blogger job, and I had to cover a meeting and report it by midnight.
The story I reported on was difficult to write because I didn't know the truth and I had no time to investigate it. One side of sources were telling me one thing, while the other side of sources were telling me another. So I did what I had to do—I wrote a story on the two sides of sources conflicting with one another. This is a situation where if I didn't talk to both sides, I could've risked writing about the the wrong source's side, which would've left me in the end being blamed for spreading false information.

Board of Trustees meeting

Just when I thought I was done after turning in my story, I realized couldn't be. I needed to write a second one. Santa Barbara's local T.V. news station, KEYT, published a story on a separate topic from the meeting I covered that I almost missed because I was too focused on writing another topic. I didn't fall asleep until almost 3:00 in the morning because I was up worrying, knowing it needed to be published ASAP or I'd seem like a poor reporter. I set my alarm to wake up early, headed to the newsroom, and wrote the second story before I had to start editing other people's stories that same morning.
Turns out that important, second breaking news story I wrote was published before Santa Barbara's two local newspapers even knew anything about it.
Instantly, I felt accomplished. All the stress and worries meant nothing because in the end I pushed passed it all. I did my job. My second story from the same meeting was published before 2 out of the 3 professional, local news organizations and I don't even have my journalism degree yet! After those two stories and other stories were published and sent out in a mass email to the school, City College's president replied in support of us journalists being anything but "the enemy of the American people" that the president of our country makes us out to be.
This was the moment I found out I have what it takes. I may not have the thickest of skin, but it will thicken with time because I have determination that can't be stopped.

Catch up on my work with The Channels: