I Want to Care

So I have that Chimes news editor position I've been eyeing all year. I'm thrilled. I think it will not only be incredibly fun to work with the new staff and be in-the-know about everything on Biola's campus, but it will challenge me like crazy. I wanted this position because it will push me to do stuff I don't think I can do at this point and force me to be organized, networked with important people, and cognizant of issues that really matter. It's probably going to be frighteningly hard, but I think this job puts you about as close to real journalism as possible on this campus.

But yes, those inadequacies are also depressing me at the moment. I realized today how undiscerning I am about what's newsworthy. I consider myself a little more politically and socially savvy than most of my friends, but I'm still so in the dark. At the moment, I'm indifferent about budgets and city councils and even the international conflicts that in high school I claimed I wanted to intervene in as a career.

Basically I'm apathetic. And uninformed. And unaware, like most of my generation.

I don't want to drop the ball that my news editor carried so valiantly this year. He assigned stories that I thought were boring. But they were important. Some of those I still think are boring. And others -- like the black history month series, the race in chapel article, the crime in La Mirada article -- I have grown to appreciate, because they are SO SIGNIFICANT and yet everybody could care less.

Next year, I fear I'll drift into mediocre mode. I'm dazzled by AS events and concerts, and I'm so vulnerable to assigning my writers to only cover events like that. Worthless. But you can describe it in pretty words and make it sound important. But it's still worthless. (Or as my Torrey reading in Ecclesiastes would say, "Meaningless! Everything is Meaningless!)

I want to care. I want to cover and investigate important incidents as a venue for exposing truth and putting it in context. I know I shouldn't fall into the trap of choosing something at random to dote over with words and highlight on the front page. But I'm so tempted. Someone help me resist so I can do something of worth.