Next week marks the 75th Anniversary of National Newspaper Week (October 4-10), a celebration of freedom of the press. In honor of this week, Meg Zink ’16, Gateway editor, reflects on her time as a student journalist…a “career” which began her freshman year.
About three years ago, I was a terrified freshman walking into school at 7:30 on a Wednesday morning to join the NDP Gateway. I didn’t know anyone who was going to be at this meeting, and I didn’t know what I would be writing about.
All I knew was that I loved to write, and the school newspaper was the best place to start. Trying to stay calm and positive, I took a chance and walked into that meeting.
As a senior, I can truly say that I will never regret going to that meeting, in fact, that was one of the absolute best decisions I have ever made.
While it has been amazing to write for the Gateway, there has been some unexpected benefits to being a part of the newspaper staff. My time on the Gateway has given me a chance to get to know the NDP community better than I ever could have imagined. I have met amazing faculty members that I would not get a chance to know otherwise. I have also gotten to know more of my fellow classmates that I may never have met if it were not for the paper. These friendships were made on early Wednesday mornings, during article brainstorming sessions, and between talks about deadlines.
For me, the Gateway is more than just a school newspaper: the Gateway is one of those things that has made me who I am today. It has helped me become a little more confident, not just in my writing skills but also as a person. It has given me the opportunity to meet new people and listen to their own experiences and perspectives on the world around them. Lastly, it gave me the ability to give back to the NDP Community by sharing my articles with them.
Being a member of the NDP Gateway staff has been such a positive experience for me during my time at NDP…I would not trade it in for anything!
Meg’s Three Favorite Articles
Save the Sloths!: This article was the first big interview that I did and the topic was something that I knew nothing about before I started writing it.
Six Ideas for Halloween Costumes with a Twist: It was so much fun trying to come up with different ideas for each school subject, and it was a new type of article for the Gateway that we hadn’t really done before.
NDP France: I enjoyed writing this article because I wrote it as soon as I got back from France. The post-trip excitement allowed me to give a lot of good details about the trip that I just took
Dear Meg,
You have joined several generations of women who call their time with The Gateway life-changing. Back when I took my first fearful step into that room (we were the first staff to use computers–two tiny little black-and-white Macintoshes–imagine that!) Gateway staff were the girls taking Mr. Waters’s two-year journalism course. And one of the first things he said to us rings in my head decades later: Stop saying you want to be a writer. You are a writer now.
That class and The Gateway more than prepared me to start studying journalism in college and I’ve been happily employed as a professional writer ever since. I’m so glad you shared your experience here, and happy to hear The Gateway is still changing lives, one byline at a time. Keep up the great work!