I march in today’s processional donning two hats – one of a graduating student and one of a graduating student journalist. Working on Inklings has been a joyful honor and a matchless learning experience — so I felt it befitting that my farewell column reflect on the most transformative memory and profound lesson I will carry with me not only from Inklings, but from my four years at Staples. I would guess that many classmates have known similar epiphanies and moments of intense growth in other Staples extracurricular activities, whether baseball, JSA or Players.
By last December, I had been a high school journalist for three years. Still, no experience could have prepared me for that day.
Just before world history class started, I checked Facebook. Someone had posted in the “Inklings Breaking News” group.
“Not sure if this is relevant,” an editor had written, “but there was a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown.”
I didn’t give it much thought. I knew Newtown was nearby, but figured it was probably an accident or minor altercation.
For the next half hour, my phone vibrated incessantly. Every minute, there was another post on Facebook, another text message from a co-editor. But I was in class; I couldn’t check the screen.
When the lunch bell rang, I bolted to the newsroom, scrolling through notifications, weaving through hordes of classmates heading to the cafeteria.
The door was open, the lights on — unusual since the room was typically locked and dark that period. Two staff writers were feverishly typing away. A faculty adviser sat at another computer, watching breaking coverage online, fingers pursed against her lips.
A news editor handed me a reporter’s notebook.
“You covering this with me?”
“Definitely,” I instinctively replied.
As we ventured around the school for interviews, smart phones in hand, breaking news at our fingertips,
I still wasn’t fully certain what had happened. I gathered that there was a shooting, and, because it was nearby, we were covering it.
It wasn’t until we got back to the newsroom that the magnitude of the tragedy began to register. Tentative details trickled into news reports, the fatality count rising by the minute. It wasn’t just adults; it was little kids, too.
Live video from Sandy Hook Elementary, just 20 miles from Staples, flashed onto the projector screen as we struggled to discern which reports were factual and which were speculation.
We hurriedly updated the
Inklings website each time we could confirm something, anything, but we remained apprehensive in our reporting.
I was still there an hour later when the Inklings staff began to enter for the Advanced Journalism class. The chuckles and murmuring gossip that normally indicated the staff’s arrival were replaced by a stupefied silence.
As a staff, we watched the news.
Absolute speechlessness.
Absolute shock.
As live coverage transitioned to commercials, two faculty advisers embraced, dissolving into tears. That was when I realized that the day’s events would change our lives forever. I felt sick and anxious, but, oddly, my emotions weren’t especially visceral. My mind told me to sit tight — to write, fact-check and edit.
That was my job.
* * * * *
Two weeks later, my family and I traveled into the city for Christmas Eve dinner. By then, our coverage had largely concluded, and Inklings’ Sandy Hook memorial issue had been published.
As the dishes came and went, I couldn’t shake from my mind images of childhood. I recalled gleefully ambling across the street toward my mom and dad after getting off the elementary school bus. I remembered skipping pebbles across the river with my brothers. I reminisced about sitting in my grandmother’s lap, reading aloud our favorite poem, “Wynken, Blynken and Nod.”
That’s when it hit me. There, in the middle of the crowded restaurant, I broke down. For weeks, my job had been to remain objective and impartial. But two weeks of keeping that bottled up was enough, and I ran to the bathroom. I rarely cry, but those memories, in concert with the Newtown tragedy, effectively moved me to my core.
As I wiped away tears, I realized I had gained an invaluable insight.
Being a journalist isn’t simply providing the most recent facts and the most captivating quotes to the public.
It’s about balancing objectivity with humanity.
