Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The Daily

So, today I went to the Daily at UW for an interview...just sort of popped my head in to see if there was anyone around to talk about writing for the paper. Everyone was really super busy, of course, and I ended up sitting down and talking to this asian woman who's head of "development" for the paper or whatever. She told me it was really really hard to write for the daily, and that they don't accept just anyone and that this year 102 students applied for 10 (!) positions on staff. Then, being the bitch I am, I told her that yeah, I've actually taken like hella journalism classes in college (they're excrutiatingly lame and will suck all creativity out of your writing. don't do it) and that, you know, I interviewed David Sedaris, and I've also written for the PI, and I was Opinions editor of my high school paper, and a columnist for The Stranger. You know, trying to say it all very nicely, reeling back the bitch, trying to look all bright eyed and happy to have some floosy student "journalist" looking down her nose at me. Then she says, "well, that's really nice but that doesn't mean you know how to write for the daily"

(Just to pick a random sentence written for the daily, let's look at this one: "While clichéd, formulaic and predictable, this Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants sequel is an undeniably great chick flick." Uhm, how can something cliched and formulaic and predictable also be undeniably great? How do these two parts of the sentence fit together? What, exactly, are you looking for in a great movie mister reviewer dude?)

In real life, I was very polite to this woman, and told her I understand students need to be "socialized" as to how the daily works, but ten fucking weeks of training to get a mothafucking sentance in a fucking student paper? The daily must really think the students at UW are fucking retarded, that's the only way I can account for this program. Maybe if they didn't have this dumbass socialization program, the Daily wouldn't sound like it plopped right out of the AP's asshole, and writers would have the freedom to really write the way they want to write. I, quite frankly, don't have the time.

3 comments:

WG said...

Couldn't have been said better. The Daily was the bane of my existence for far too long.

Unknown said...

Good for you, Steven. The Daily is a lousy paper. The only thing it would be good for is getting more clips. Maybe you can just submit stuff from time to time. Sounds like actually working for them would be a fiasco.

Michael Strangeways said...

I just wrote a brilliant comment, but piece of shit Google just ate it.

In a nutshell: The Daily SUCKS, you're better than they are, they're probably jealous of your resume and don't waste your time.

It's sad to say, but the SGN is better written and edited than The Daily.