Back to my roots

When I entered college, I had my mind set on becoming a journalist.

Writing was something that I was passionate about. Reading newspapers was my hobby. And I liked the idea of writing for a newspaper. That's why I chose to take up journalism in college, so I could plant my roots in the field I wanted to get into.

But somewhere along the way, I branched out. My creative instinct kicked in, and it kicked in fast.

Unfortunately, Journalism and Creativity don't mix. In our news writing class, our professor Ben Dom told me that I couldn't be a journalist because I was too creative. And because of that creativity, my news items were becoming less factual and more frivolous.

Of course, I tried to prove him wrong. Eventually, I did well in his class, but after that, I decided to uproot myself from Journalism and pursue a more creative field. The field where I am now.

I haven't completely turned my back on that field, though. There are the occasional article writing jobs for magazines, and the journalism courses that I've handled the past year. So, my roots to the journalistic world hasn't been completely cut.

And thanks to the seminar I'm attending, my journalistic roots are further being strengthened.

We had a group assignment: to create a news blog about a topic related to women and sports. Our group - composed of 2 Filipinos, an Indonesian and a Bosnian - was assigned the topic "Women in Boxing." After all the brainstorming, data gathering and interviewing, we divided the work among the 4 of us.

Two members were assigned to the video news presentation, one was assigned to the radio version of the report, and I was assigned to do the website and write all the articles.

In less than 4 hours, we came up with this.

For a journalistic piece that we had less than a day to prepare, our project came out beautifully. The articles were well researched, the videos were interesting and fun, the radio spot was fact filled, and the overall output was clear, concise and creative.

Among the 5 groups who presented, our website was the best received. The instructor said that it was interestingly done, while keeping all the facts and figures, and carrying a strong message.

I'm so glad that the journalist in me is still there. And after this exercise, I feel that I should do this more often.