It’s application season at The Daily Tar Heel. For us, this means that in about one week, the DTH office will get a shot in the arm in the form of more than 100 new student staffers. When that time comes, our newsroom will become one of the liveliest in America.
The rest of this blog series will be devoted to taking you inside 151 E. Rosemary Street. But today, I want you to know one thing: there is still time for you to be a part of it.
Applications are due at 5 p.m. tomorrow. Friday. 5 p.m. It can take as little as 30 minutes to do. You still have time to do the following: Go home. Take a nap. Pull up the application on your laptop. Stare into a glass of scotch for inspiration. Take another nap. Then do the application. By that time, you’ll have a completed application, hours to spare and a mild buzz.
There are many, many pitches to join the DTH that I’ve heard over the years. Here are some of the most popular:
1. Prestige — Thomas Wolfe, Charles Kuralt, Peter Gammons, etc. etc. Selected year after year as one of a handful of excellent college newspapers.
2. Resume — Especially if you’re into journalism. If you want to get a job in the biz, no activity looks better than involvement at the DTH.
3. Name in the paper — You’ll get to see your name on the pages of something that tens of thousands of people read every day.
But I’m going to provide another reason that also doubles as one of the things that sets the DTH apart from other college papers. Two words: three reads. (This point is mainly for the writers out there. On days that I’m feeling more colorful, I’ll dip into the photo, design and video worlds).
Three reads means that every staff writer, when they have a completed story, has their work edited in a face to face setting with three — count ‘em, three! — different editors. An assistant editor, his or her desk editor and then either me or the managing editor. Elise is much nicer than me.
The benefits are clear. Your bad writing habits will literally (figuratively) get beaten out of you by the three-edit process. Your writing will become more clear, more concise, more readable. Even if you’re not a journalism major (I’m a history major) you can benefit from this. Example: writing papers (I’m sitting in an English recitation covering tips on paper writing right now, and it could totally double as news writing).
You’ll also learn to argue. Our editors are trained to challenge what you emphasize in your stories, and they’ll expect you to defend them. By being challenged, you’ll be better.
You’ll also make at least three friends!
But seriously, I believe we have one of the most readable college papers in America. This is, in large part, due to the three-read mechanism. After three edits, a story is complete and gets to the point.
So there’s one point. Recitation’s winding down, so I’ll leave you with this: Apply! Before it’s too late!
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