By Stephania Rodriguez

As I approach the end of my senior year as a journalism major, I look back at all the interviews I’ve done, the people I’ve met, the photographs I’ve taken, the issues I’ve covered, and the places I’ve traveled to tell a good story. There was sacrifice, as with any dream we pursue, and moments when I didn’t always feel comfortable, but I always made sure to reward myself when all the hard work was done.

At the end of every week, I have to admit that I feel physically and mentally tired, but I’ve been finding ways to step away from my job and make sure I take care of my body and I can be equipped to take on whatever assignment is next.

When I first began seriously pursuing journalism, it never crossed my mind to consider the effects that the job could have on my mental health. If I was choosing to pursue the career I loved, then certainly my mental health would be the last thing I’d need to worry about.

Though I myself do not battle with mental health issues, it’s a struggle that I’ve gotten to know firsthand. Someone that I love was diagnosed with a severe mental health disorder that makes it hard for them to do many of life’s daily tasks. Having this person in my life has given me the awareness and mindfulness that I have now about mental health, and I’ve often applied it to how I show up as a journalist.

Many journalists do in fact have mental health issues.  A research article found that the prevalence of PTSD among journalists is higher than that among the general population.

There are topics reporters cover that may inevitably cause stress and mental health strain not only for the sources they are speaking to, but on themselves as well. Some reporters cover stories that involve trauma, such as natural disasters, violence, abuse, and harassment, which can cause journalists to experienceanxiety, depression, sleep and eating disorders, burnout, trauma, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The Media Diversity Institute cited a research article that studied journalists who quit the profession.  “The professions increased demands and the industry’s digitalization played a large role in their decision to quit. According to the research’s conclusions, ‘the lack of institutional support on work-life balance and mental health paired with the institutional demands to be “all in” and always on, and the consequential lack of professional–personal life balance, led journalists to have a sense of disconnection from both their personal and professional lives.’”

There have been more initiatives in recent years that show that newsrooms are considering their reporters’ mental health. Reuters created an online resource centerfor journalists that’s full of access to information and guidance on topics like stress, burnout, trauma, and mental illness. They cite research from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma that shows that newsroom managers play “a crucial role in promoting a healthy, resilient workplace, and that effective newsroom leadership plays a protective role for journalists exposed to stress and trauma.”

When it comes to taking care of their mental health, I believe there are some questions journalists can ask themselves about the newsroom they are working in or want to work in:

• How does this newsroom support their reporters when it comes to their mental health?
• What kinds of resources do they provide for addressing mental health issues?
• Is there someone within your newsroom that you can talk to about mental health and discuss how to find solutions and balance?

It’s important for journalists who are struggling to speak up and find the help they need, but newsrooms certainly play an equally important role in navigating this issue.

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By Jacob Costello

I first saw Andrew Callaghan on the YouTube channel “All Gas No Breaks.” I was instantly intrigued by his lanky frame, wild mop of red hair, and signature ill-fitting brown suit. His early work complimented his goofy appearance. Callaghan went to beach parties, music festivals, porn conventions, NASCAR races, pretty much any place where people would be drinking and/or saying outlandish things. While I got a lot of entertainment from these zany gatherings and the characters he would find, what I really began to enjoy was his coverage of protests, demonstrations, and political events.

After a legal dispute over the ownership of “All Gas No Breaks,” Callaghan would create a new channel called “Channel Five.” I feel this marked a step into more journalistic work. He would still interview Phish fans huffing nitrous gas in the parking lot of the concert, but he also began to go to political rallies and other more serious events. Callaghan covered the War in Ukraine, the Derek Chauvin trial verdict, and many other stories that were a far cry from his humble roots of interviewing drunk college students on Bourbon Street. What I loved about his coverage is how he would interview anybody who was willing to talk to him. At every one of these locations, he would interview “normal” people, or at least as normal as you can get at a convention for people who like to dress up in fur suits.

Callaghan’s 2022 documentary “This Place Rules,” contains some of his best reporting. The documentary follows the young journalist travelling across America in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election. After the election, he begins to cover the “Stop the Steal” protests and interviews inflammatory figures like Alex Jones. Callaghan never fails to bring a human element to these stories, my favorite of which is when he spends time with a family who has completely bought into the Q Anon conspiracy. His interviews with the young children are the most impactful, who have begun to parrot the conspiracies that their parents fed to them.

Callaghan explained his journalistic style of “radical empathy” to Alina Selyukh in an interview on NPR.

“The goal of the film was to really talk to people without a pre-loaded agenda, not trying to slam dunk or find the dumbest person there and make them feel small or catch them in a lie or a contradiction. But to actually try to apply some empathy and really talk to some of these folks and figure out why it is that they feel this way,” said Callaghan.

Callaghan’s journalism reminds me a lot of Hunter S. Thompson and his gonzo journalism. They both traverse America finding unique stories that haven’t been told yet. Four months ago, I would have said Callaghan and Thompson were two of my favorite journalists. However, information came to light in January that showed a side of Callaghan that most did not know about.

Days after the release of his documentary on HBO, multiple women came forward on social media claiming Callaghan had pressured them into sex while drinking. He responded two weeks later, saying he never assaulted anyone but he apologized for his pushy behavior. He also said he knows these incidents occurred under the influence and would be committing to the 12 Step Program. That was the last the internet saw of Andrew Callaghan.

Callaghan’s talent as an interviewer and a journalist is undeniable, but his reprehensible behavior will always taint my view of him. I am skeptical if he will return to journalism, but if he does will people forgive him? Will I forgive him? I wish I had the answer.

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by Juliana Pelaez

From movies to the classroom setting, you are told that if you want to be seen first, before other news outlets, you must be first on the scene. You want to be the one reporting on the story before anyone else. But in wanting to be first, reporters must be careful to separate fact from fiction.

Big time news outlets like CNBC, Bloomberg, The Daily, and NBC were tricked into believing that two men heading out of Twitter headquarters, in October of 2022, were employees. Aftera large number of officials and employees were laid off from their positions it was assumed that they were a part of this group. In fact those two individuals were pranksters posing as Twitter employees with devised names.

CNBC’s reporter, Deirdre Bosa, was the first to interview them, asking how they were dealing with the aftermath of their termination. “They are visibly shaken,” Bosa stated. “Daniel tells us he owns a Tesla and doesn’t know how he’s going to make payments.”

ABC7 Bay Area reporter Suzanne Phan tweeted out the story stating that one of the men said he was terminated after a zoom meeting.

Other reporters on the scene and online were hounding the two individuals for a story. In the absence of contacting Twitter management to understand what happened and questioning if these men were who they really said they were, the story is mere words. It then had become something that these reporters were wanting, not something they tried to find. While it does make sense that reporters are always on a deadline and editors want a story, the facts must come first. And in this instance, the facts came second.

Another report related to the Twitter aftermath comes from what we wrote as one of the deadline writings in our final last quarter. A group of men boarded a school bus carrying Jewish grade-school children in West Rogers Park, yelled antisemitic slurs and gave the Hitler salute, according to officials with the Simon Wiesenthal Center (Chicago SunTimes).

The incident occured on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom that destroyed almost all synagogues across Germany in 1938. Several people were interviewed about the incident citing this anniversary and how it was harmful to the Jewish community. The story was reported by both the Chicago SunTimes and NBC Chicago—two news operations that people rely on for daily news—and turned out to be fabricated.

Personally, when reading through the story, I thought it was true. I remember I wrote it in a way to explain what was wrong in the situation. Attempting to add the minor details that weren’t added in the story beforehand. It wasn’t until near the end of our time that I discovered that the story wasn’t true and I couldn’t change the direction I already had.

The difference though in what I wrote to what reporters put out was that they shared this to the public without fact checking. They didn’t wait for the footage from the bus to tell the factual story.

Being in any news outlet, the public depends on you to have the news be factual and true. But, in some cases the truth falls wayside to the rush to puiblish.  What must be done to prevent this is to take the time on getting the facts and reporting the story that is available. Not what we want to have.

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By Grace Golembiewksi 

 One of the first things I was taught in multiple journalism classes was the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics. The Code is a thorough and descriptive list explaining the four principles it believes journalists should abide by in the field. These are seeking truth and reporting it, minimizing harm, acting independently, and being accountable and transparent.

 In some of my film classes, I was taught to take pictures/film until you were told not to be there anymore and to always put my camera behind me so security guards would not take it from me. On the other hand, this would not fly in a journalistic piece. I truly believe that documentary and journalism overlap in several areas, which was one of the main reasons I pursued both for my studies.

 However, it made me think while journalists have these pillars to use as their moral guide, documentary filmmakers do not have a set guide of ethical standards within the industry. 

In a conversation with DePaul University film Professor Susanne Suffredin, she stated that “there are no hard and fast rules for the ethics around what you end up filming or making as a documentarian. It’s usually case by case, and it’s often up to the individual, which makes it more complicated because you’re asking the individual to bring a certain amount of integrity and ethical awareness, and behavior to what they’re doing. Because it’s not strictly defined, not everybody adheres to it in the same way.” 

 Like in journalism, documentarians hold a lot of power, specifically the power of a trustful audience, but with great power comes great responsibility. Sadly, an audience’s trust can be easily exploited. One example from the Center for Media and Social Impact is the film Plandemic (2020), which continued the spread of misinformation about Covid-19. I even remember when the docuseries Tiger King was released, sitting in film school questioning why this was labeled as a documentary when it was filmed more like a reality show, even going as far as to speculate a murder.  

While chatting with me, Prof. Suffredin stated that even though there may not be a set of guidelines documentarians must refer to, she found similarities between the journalistic Code of Ethics and ethics emphasized by many documentary filmmakers. Documentary filmmakers often seek truth, film it, and go even further to examine the meaning of truth. While they might not attribute each fact presented, filmmakers often tell the audience the point of view that the film focuses on. There is a strict yet unspoken rule that documentary filmmakers must never pay their subjects, with exceptions such as life rights, just as you never pay a source in journalism. Suffredin believes and hopes that documentarians seek to do no harm or, if they do, explain the reason behind this potential harm. 

 Suffredin stated, “you [the filmmaker] give the audience some guidelines to let them know what to expect. As long as you adhere to those guidelines, I think the audience both trusts you and trusts the film…And then ultimately, once the film is out, or whatever you’ve made is out, it gives the public, the audience, whatever venue that it’s being viewed in, the opportunity to come back with questions and say, ‘well, wait a minute, you said this, is this true?’ So, it does become a conversation.” 

The Center for Media and Social Impact suggests that journalists and film critics become part of this conversation, and I could not agree more! By using watchdog sites to actively report on documentary topics, increasing journalistic coverage of the documentary film industry, and film critics analyzing the documentary form, these methods can hold documentarians accountable for the information provided in their films. As the documentary film audience expands, the Center for Media and Social Impact believes it is the journalist’s and critics’ duty to hold documentary films accountable through discussion. 

 As a journalist and documentarian, myself, I find it essential to recognize the different ethical standards for journalism and documentary, written or unwritten, and ensure accountability within the documentary film community. 

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By Emily Soto

I participated in a summer journalism bootcamp in 2021, hosted by a small, hyperlocal newsroom in the Chicago suburbs. The team of three journalists ─ yes, just three reporters ran the entire newsroom ─ taught us about the importance of preserving local news and the responsibility it has to the people in a community. They showed us how to use our reporting to reflect and support a neighborhood in a way that empowers its people to engage with each other. They stressed that local journalists were able to hold officials accountable, especially the ones who typically slide under the radar.

But isn’t local news dying? At least that’s what I heard in journalism school. A few professors even advised me to stay away from certain forms of media for fear of no path forward.

Are they right? The 2022 State of Local News report from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism said that since 2005, the U.S. is on track to lose a third of its newspapers by 2025. When the large chains which own much of the nation’s newspapers need to make cuts, the locals are the first to go.

The report added, “The loss of local journalism has been accompanied by the malignant spread of misinformation and disinformation, political polarization, eroding trust in media, and a yawning digital and economic divide among citizens…Even in their diminished state, newspapers still provide most of the news that feeds our democracy at the state and local level.”

This is just as I was told at the bootcamp. So, with such a big responsibility, how do we ensure a future for this news source?

Local news has the ability to do things the legacies and national networks can’t do and it’s time we realize this.

We’ve already seen it happening in Chicago when Block Club Chicago and Borderless Magazine partnered to publish a series of profiles called “After The Busses” which followed 10 of the Venezuelan migrants bussed to Chicago from Texas as they figure out life in the city.

We’ve seen it when publications like the Harvey World Herald are the only source of media coverage on their municipal elections, or city council meetings.

But what we are really seeing from these and many other local news sources are journalists who are fulfilling a duty that has been taken for granted. As the SPJ Code of Ethics puts it, they are “ensuring we remember that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy.”

During the bootcamp, the publication’s Editor-in-Chief also shared with us one instance when he met a young journalist on the job for a legacy paper. When my instructor mentioned he works for a hyperlocal news organization, the young reporter responded saying, hopefully he might see this Editor-in-Chief in his major newsroom someday.

As long as we continue to have this mentality that local news is for the journalists who “didn’t make it,” those publications will continue to crumble, and journalists will keep failing to fulfill their duty.

It’s time to take the small newsrooms seriously.

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by Lily Lowndes

I have always believed that journalism is a function of justice. As journalists, we are truth-tellers. We seek to bring injustices to light, whether those injustices come from a company, government body or an individual.

What I also believed was that the harmful actions of these companies, government bodies and individuals were indicative of their characters. I was at peace with any consequences they might face after reporters brought their stories to light. If they did something wrong, there were no excuses.

Of course, the reporting must be fair, but it should not cushion the harm that was done. Justice must be enacted through tough, no-nonsense coverage.

These were my beliefs until I read an article where I knew the subject facing no-nonsense coverage. Having a real connection to this person and reading the subsequent articles about their actions changed my outlook on how journalists report on private citizens.

As journalists, we must take extra care to ensure to be fair when covering a private citizen and their actions.

Last fall, Block Club Chicago and the Chicago Tribune both ran stories about a DePaul student distributing fliers to a homeless encampment announcing free housing at a nearby hotel. These fliers not only turned out to be false, but they were a publicity stunt for the student’s mayoral campaign.

If a reader did not read beyond the headline of the story, they might assume terrible things about this student, that they likely had malicious intent, they are against the unhoused, or they do not have empathy for others.

When Block Club and the Tribune shared their coverage on social media, the backlash this student received was severe. I am not condoning what they did, but I will never support online attacks.

Twitter users commented on the Block Club and Tribune posts writing that the student was a horrible person, calling for DePaul to expel the student and one user even wrote that they should be kicked out of Chicago.

At the time of the incident, the student was a freshman in a class I was mentoring. I was in class with this student, talked one-on-one with them and gave feedback on their assignments. The person that I grew to know was kind-hearted. They did not seem like they would act with malicious intent, nor did they seem like they should be kicked out of Chicago.

Instead of gunning for hard-hitting coverage, for the first time, I was yearning for the reporters to take a more compassionate lens. This student was a minor, only 17 years old. They were not malicious, naive maybe, but I thought that this coverage broke a golden rule of the Society of Professional Journalists: minimize harm.

After reading the articles, I was worried for the student’s well-being. I was angry at the reporters because I could tell what questions they asked and what questions they did not ask. At the end of the article, I had even more questions that were unaddressed in the text.

Even if someone read beyond the headline, they would not find a clear answer to why the student chose to distribute the fliers. Yes, it was a part of her mayoral campaign, but I found it shocking that the reporters did not ask how it would help her campaign or if she had an action plan for the unhoused.

A person is more than their actions. It is imperative that we know not only what a person did, but why they did it. We cannot treat private individuals like they are government bodies or major corporations. These are real people with a backstory and a life before the covered event that happened because there is a difference between enacting justice and reporting something that brings harm and needlessly ruins someone’s life.

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by Patrick Sloan-Turner

As I’ve begun to apply for jobs in my final year of undergrad, I’ve found myself increasingly thinking about my own journalistic “brand.” I hate that word, but many journalists will say it’s a necessary part of the business. The idea of cultivating a journalistic persona has commanded my attention.

“How does the language in my writing read? Do I put too much of myself on my Twitter feed? Does the font choice on my resume accurately depict my vibe?”

Most of all, I’ve tried to keep my opinion to myself. For a journalist finishing up his degree, that means to Tweet carefully.

In all honesty, it hadn’t been that hard. Then, an issue came up in my college newsroom that was overwhelmingly difficult to not publicly share my thoughts on. It was tough because I was part of the story.

Last year, I started an initiative at DePaul for students to be offered a university-sponsored health insurance plan. Quickly, administrators asked me to join a task force to create a proposal to bring to the university’s board of trustees.

It was a big story that DePaul’s student newspaper, The DePaulia, obviously needed to cover. As a journalism major writing for student media, I of course disclosed my involvement to The DePaulia’s leadership, and told them there was little I’d be able to share with anyone covering the ongoing story.

A year later, I’m now a managing editor of the publication. The task force’s work ended after the board of trustees approved our plan, aiming to implement a student insurance plan by Fall 2023.

Then, things changed.

One of our reporters heard that the board changed its mind. I was disgusted to hear that the plan would now be delayed indefinitely. Immediately I felt an urge to use my platform at the paper to broadcast this issue to anyone who would listen.

I wanted to write a front-page op-ed, telling our readers that more than 90 percent of 4-year schools in the U.S. offer its students health insurance. I wanted to use the paper to call out the board of trustees for disallowing nearly 2000 students the option to receive health insurance.

But I couldn’t. Doing so would hurt The DePaulia’s credibility. It would likely hurt my own credibility as journalist. I kept quiet as the talented reporters working for our paper did the work and confirmed that the plan would indeed be delayed. It took a few days, but The DePaulia broke the news and Tweeted a link to the story on Twitter, all the while, I continued to keep my thoughts and anger at bay.

The New York Times doesn’t like its journalists to Tweet their opinions. Still, there’s countless journalists on the platform who have cultivated careers sharing opinions on whatever is in the ethos in between their unbiased work.

Twitter for journalists is still somewhat uncharted territory – at least in the academic world. We haven’t spent any lectures on how we should use Twitter. There’s no stylebook for journalism social media guidelines. For someone who would like to be a hard-news reporter, I always thought it best to keep my thoughts off it.

In my case, I decided to Tweet a thread sharing my perspective close to the situation, calling out university administration and sharing my disgust with how the university was treating its students. I’m not sure it was the smart move, but I told myself that maybe sometimes things are more important than my own personal “brand” or career. Attention to the issue was more important than brand.

Maybe that’s my brand.

By Abena Bediako

Journalists don’t need a license to practice journalism. The profession does not fall into the same category as being a doctor or a lawyer. Journalism requires a method, almost scientific in fact.

But one major obstacle often hindering reporters is the internet, where a high volume of misinformation and disinformation circulates. Almost anyone can tweet a picture of a disaster or event and claim it’s credible.

The pressure of being first with breaking news sometimes takes precedence over fact-checking and ensuring the validity of the story “journalists” report on. And all it takes is one person to spread the inaccuracy to gain some real traction.

Before going further, I feel it’s important to distinguish the difference between misinformation and disinformation. Disinformation is when people intentionally create false or misleading information to make money, have political influence, or maliciously cause trouble or harm. Misinformation is when people share disinformation but don’t realize it’s false or misleading.

 The current war in Ukraine is a great example. BBC Monitoring posted an article on their site, the headline reading, “Ukraine invasion: False claims the war is a hoax go viral.” Below the byline is an image of a man who appears to be a wounded soldier. However, upon further examination, the photo derives from a Ukraine TV series titled Contamin. 

The photo comes from the production set taken in December 2020, more than a year before the Ukraine war. Fact-checking goes beyond words. Images and videos require equal scrutiny, but things get difficult when the article and images accumulate 1,000 plus “likes” and retweets, making the story seem credible.

It does not help journalists either when people with political power openly discredit the work of reporters and claim they are solely responsible for spreading lies and inaccuracies.

The media holds a bad rep, especially for those it does not favor. The term “fake news” became extremely popular during the Trump administration. It even went as far as providing inaccurate information about COVID-19 and claimed there was massive fraud during the 2020 election.

Journalists are the watchdogs of democracy, and if people can’t trust news publications to keep them informed on society, who will they turn to?

There is a continuous development of unqualified “reporters” creating blog websites that only serve to spread misinformation. This issue needs to be addressed more.

There is a clear line between tabloid news and actual reporting, but the internet has made some of the lines a bit murky.

In Misinformation and Herd Behavior in Media Markets, written by Bartosz Wilczek, the author states, “tabloids will allocate more attention to political and business misinformation than rival broadsheets. Thereby, they will make the misinformation more publicly available and, therefore, put more pressure on broadsheets to allocate attention to the misinformation as well.”

Publications and media outlets feel pressure to generate more attention. The media lives to serve its audience, therefore they need to find ways to keep them engaged. Some of their tactics show in the speed of a published story or the sensationalism of a story. However, neither of these should take precedence over the truth.

You don’t need a license to practice journalism, but you do need to stick with the journalistic method. Journalists need to be the ones to remind the public what good reporting entails.

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By: Monique Mulima

When I started my master’s in journalism, I was excited to embark on my new career path. Having only been out of school a year, I figured it was a reasonable time to go back, but little did I know, that to some I seemed late.

My classmates were already well-versed in skills like the inverted pyramid, AP style and had connections in the industry, while I was still getting my footing. Although this could sometimes be frustrating, I figured since we were all in the same program, we were still on track to have the same opportunities. But as I began to apply to internships and attend industry panels, I started to realize that many news organizations were not interested in someone without prior journalism experience.

It’s the job seekers paradox, you are supposed to have experience to get a job but can’t get experience without a job. I worried about whether I was already too late to get into journalism, and I wasn’t alone in having these thoughts.

Journalists, particularly those of marginalized backgrounds, have pointed out that companies only seeking people with experience limits the applicant pool by excluding those without industry connections and those who historically made not have had access to the same opportunities.

This was a particularly large online conversation in August 2021 when The Washington Post posted their summer internship applications, which included the requirement for “previous experience in a major newsroom.” People within the journalism industry pointed out how this can be a barrier to many students who do not have connections in the industry to get into a major newsroom or who may live in smaller towns that don’t have major newsrooms.

Journalist Soledad O’Brien tweeted “If you are currently a college junior who is looking for a newsroom internship and has already had prior experience working ‘in a major newsroom’ your daddy is probably employed there. Good luck!”

Austin-American Statesman reporter Nicole Foy pointed out on Twitter that The Washington Post isn’t alone in have these requirements. “The thing about everyone dunking on the ‘major newsroom’ part of this tweet is that even local newspapers with like 25 people are this selective despite definitely NOT being the Washington Post,” she wrote.

Following the backlash, The Washington Post did remove this wording from their job requirements, but just because it is no longer listed, it does not mean that they are now actually interviewing people who don’t have that experience.

Teen Vogue Interim Managing Editor Jewel Wicker wrote a Twitter thread about how The Washington Post including this wording in the first place purposely discourages certain students from applying, and how even if those students apply they may just be wasting their time and not be considered anyways. “As someone who works to place interns in newsrooms, this makes me so sad. Every single day this industry shows us they’re not serious about fixing the inequities in journalism,” she wrote.

Oftentimes journalists propose that aspiring journalists get their start in smaller media markets and newsrooms to gain experience. However, these positions are often low paid (if paid at all), and students of marginalized backgrounds may not be able to afford to work for these salaries, especially if it may require relocation.

Another concern with some smaller markets is that a number of these places may not be as welcoming to people of color and LGBTQ+ people. This limits even further how and where marginalized students can gain industry experience. The Nieman Journalism Lab compiled a thread of dozens of tweets of journalists of color’s experience with racism in newsrooms across the country. The Nieman Lab also did research into racism in newsrooms, and found that journalism has a clear racism problem and put together a list of peer-reviewed studies that point to some of these issues.

Even if students can overcome all these barriers and get their start in the industry, it still may not be enough to advance when so many news outlets like The Washington Post will only consider applicants who have worked in larger newsrooms.

Huffington Post politics reporter Liz Skalka tweeted about how this is an industry wide problem. “If you’re pissed off about the Washington Post’s “major newsroom” requirement for interns, wait till you hear how this industry treats people who have spent any significant amount of time in ‘local news,’” she wrote.

If journalism truly wants to reflect the makeup of America and become more equitable, it cannot keep in place the same barriers that have always existed. It has to become more open to people with other experiences like freelance, student newsrooms and non-major newsrooms. Journalism shouldn’t just challenge the status quo in our reporting, we should also do it within our newsrooms.

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by Erik Uebelacker

I was the opinions editor for The DePaulia for the entirety of my senior year. I have dozens of op-eds published under my name, available for the whole world to see with a simple Google search. As a result, my personal beliefs on politics, social issues, world events, etc. can be easily discovered by anybody who is curious.

It’s disheartening that the very stories that it was once my job to write could prevent me from future employment opportunities within the journalism industry.

This certainly isn’t a given. But due to the constantly debated and ever-changing definition of journalistic objectivity, I know I have to prepare myself for this possibility. All journalists should, not necessarily because of a readily available library of opinion stories published under their name, but because of a near-unanimous growth of individuals’ digital footprints that makes it harder to keep their true beliefs secret.

In theory, preferring unbiased journalists to produce objective reporting makes sense. These journalists don’t exist, however. It’s not a profound epiphany to discover that nobody is without personal biases or beliefs, even reporters. In fact, journalists may have even stronger opinions on their areas of coverage than non-reporters, due to the fact that they are constantly speaking to sources and engrossing themselves in their beat.

Walter Lippmann admitted this as far back as 1919 in his famed writing about journalistic objectivity. The American Press Institute later summarized Lippmann’s findings, stating in their objectivity guide that, “The method is objective, not the journalist.”

Under this century-old explanation, my op-eds shouldn’t come back to bite me. If the journalist can’t be truly objective, then having my personal beliefs so easily accessible shouldn’t hinder my reporting potential, so long as the reporting itself is done objectively and truthfully.

That’s still not the reality, though. I’ve heard stories from friends and colleagues about hiring managers scouring their social media accounts and general web presence, making employment decisions based on how much opinion they express online. The New York Times discourages their journalists from sharing beliefs on social media. I can only assume they wouldn’t be happy if their reporters had columns or op-eds out there as well.

These industry leaders know that all reporters, and all people, have biases. I’ve read The American Press Institute’s “The lost meaning of ‘objectivity’” countless times in numerous journalism classes at DePaul. I’m sure other journalism schools require the same. Even so, many in the public and in the industry still expect reporters to operate under this veil of true objectivity that prohibits them from expressing how they truly feel outside of a story.

In this process, I can’t help but feel that some transparency is lost. The American Press Institute calls for “a transparent approach to evidence” in the reporting process. As a young reporter, I’d like to know the beliefs of the journalists behind a story. Shielding those from the public, when we all know that they are there, is not in the best interest of preserving that transparency. This is even more applicable today, as the spread of misinformation is rampant in the world of politics and media, with much of it done anonymously.

After all, it’s not a journalist’s job to be an unbiased person. Their job is to separate those biases from the reporting they do and the stories they share.

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