When both alma mater hymns are sung and players begin to head back, it’s our signal to make a beeline for the media room.
By the time we get there, we all switch to autopilot. Our writers divide themselves–someone goes out to get interviews, another goes over or writes his part, the Editor updates our social media accounts–and our photographers begin editing their top photos to try to make it to the five-minute deadline. Hardly anyone ever speaks to each other unless it is necessary.
It is almost as if we secured a spot in the media room–you will find us in the far left corner, on the floor. If we’re not there, we’re in one of the bathrooms of the arena–where we unplug the hand driers to charge our laptops. We make do.
I have been covering the UAAP for roughly three years now. I served the publication last year as its Photo Editor, and one of the things I have noticed is campus journalists have (more often than not) been, for the lack of a better word, underestimated. I have heard complaints from our staff that they have been pushed around by mainstream media, or they have been referred to as “children” when being addressed by other journalists in the room.
The people we cover events with have more or less been in the industry longer than we have. It’s their livelihood. It’s their job to write stories, to take photographs, to produce content in such a short amount of time. We understand where they are coming from. This, though, doesn’t merit anyone the right to treat us unfairly.
On one particular opening weekend, I covered a game with our staffers. We followed our usual protocols and headed back to the media room right after the game. Except for this time, when we entered, there were loud noises coming from the locker room located next to the media room. It echoed throughout. No one else was sitting beside the corner near the locker rooms, and so when loud banging started from the athletes celebrating their triumph–writers from mainstream media started yelling at us to shut up.
We merely looked at them, in shock of all that has happened.
It did not bother our staffers, it did not bother me. We went on with our tasks. After the writers from the other publications conducted their interviews, two of them went up to us to give us a lecture. They even threatened to “boot” us out of the media room should that happen again.
Our staff and I left the media room instead. I couldn’t concentrate after what happened. I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to defend our staffers, but I also wasn’t surprised considering this is not the first time we got told off about something we didn’t do.
We make sure to remind our staffers to act professional and to be kind. We have our own protocols and we abide by them. We have a handbook. We have a writing stylebook. We do not get paid for what we do, but I believe we work almost as hard as those who work for mainstream media organizations. Campus publications are made up of students who are passionate and driven to learn more about the industry through the professionals we work with and are only paid through the experiences we get from covering events. These are student leaders who would do everything to get the story out, in exchange for nothing. We work hard to do what we do because this is our own way of serving our respective communities.
In one of the first out-of-campus rallies I covered, a former The LaSallian photographer and current full-time photojournalist gave me advice that I should not be scared of the people from mainstream media. She told me to look at the job of a campus journalist as some sort of an internship in the world of journalism, and that the mainstream media journalists I cover with are my mentors. There are some who actually give me advice and who actually treat me as their colleague. These are the friendships I make along the way which inspire me to pursue storytelling. These are the people I look up to for inspiration. They understand what it means to start somewhere, to have but your pure passion and drive to learn more.
We all start small. Campus publications should be the breeding grounds of tomorrow’s great journalists. These publications are run by students who, despite their academic and personal obligations, give time, soul, and effort into the stories they write and the content they put out. How are we expected to grow, though, if we are continuously treated as if we don’t know anything? Sure, there are so much more we need to learn. Bringing us down is not going to help us either. If only, this would only encourage us more to work harder and better to be recognized our supposed colleagues. With due respect, what makes the version of their truth much more significant than ours?
