Second Rate Journalists?
CUNY Students on Election Night
By Maya J. Pope-Chappell
Last week I made several calls to the Department of Homeless Services in an attempt to talk with someone about a story I was working on. No one returned my calls. I followed up by sending a couple of emails, and still to no avail, I received nothing. After several attempts over a three day period, I finally got a response. But the response was not what I had hoped for.
In a generic email sent on behalf of the press secretary, it read:
“Due to the overwhelming volume of student requests, we cannot respond to individual requests.”
So wait, because I’m a student you can’t answer a legitimate question? Sure I understand that the department is probably overwhelmed with requests from the media, but what about being a student journalist makes me unworthy of an answer? Am I not a real reporter?
This made me recall a time when I went to cover my first daybook story in lower Manhattan where two teachers were receiving makeovers after winning a contest sponsored by a major magazine. There were a group of students there all covering the event and once they found out that we were all students, they corralled us in a small area like we were a bunch of herd and feed us information and contacts one by one.
Why is it that student journalists are treated as if we’re second-rate novices? Sure, some could argue that we are, but many of us bring great ideas, stories, and experience to the table. Yes, we may write articles that will never see the light past our laptops, but about the stories that we do write that live on the pages of newspapers and magazines or posted on the web?
Take for example CUNY student Cristina Alesci who broke the story about the FBI files kept on journalist David Halberstam that was picked up across the country. Or the election coverage that all the students at CUNY contributed to that led to over 30,000 page views on the New York City News Service.
What do you think? Have you experienced a time when you were treated differently because of your status as a student journalist?
November 18th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
I can completely sympathize. I even wrote a post about a similar situation a while back! The PR person at the New York Public Library refused to talk to me about a (positive!) story I was writing about library use. He said they “don’t help college kids with their papers.” That stung.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I wonder if he was the only PR person.(to Marcella’s response)
It actually doesn’t bother me because somehow, I will find a way to complete my story.
I can share that recently I was told by an officer from the DCPI (NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information) that there is an officer that is designated with students.
However, when I called again, I had no problem at all. The detective on the phone was really helpful and called me back on my cellphone today because her computer was running slow.