Steve Damish Visits UNH

During Steve Damish's lecture last week he asked the audience for a show of hands as to how much longer they think newspapers will be in business. I was one of few who raised their hands first when he called out "5-6 years, maybe less". Then he asked 10-15 years and finally 15+ years, with the majority of hands in the air. Once he started explaining why he knew newspapers would never go out of style, everything kind of dawned on me; everything he said was making sense.
Damish explained that we are a constantly evolving society and with that so is the news and how it is delivered. I never really thought about the fact that news doesn't stop; not ever. People will always need to be in the know about what is going on around their environment; whether that be a smaller community scale, nationally, or worldwide.
Throughout his lecture and Wednesday's class the main concept he drilled into my head (and most likely everyone else he lectured to) was that no one else can do the job of a journalist. "Because who else can report this the way we can? Nobody. Who else can do what we do, as efficient as we do it, as well as we do? Nobody."
The stories he recalled in the lecture that his newspaper, the Brockton Enterprise, did really were captivating. Especially the three day story about increase in heroine OD’s over the span of a couple months in Massachusetts. He said they sold out everywhere. And then in class he took us step-by-step unfolding the story of the Town Selectmen "good'ole boy network" in West Bridgewater. It was truly fascinating and really made the transition of how I easily I could become a news reporter very reachable.
Overall, I learned that perseverance is what you need to succeed as a journalist. Even though I don't particularly want to go into news writing; it is a concept that you need to reach your goals.