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FRIDAY, MAY 4, 2018
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Editor’s note: A 30 column is a chance for departing permanent staff to say farewell and reflect on their time spent in the The Daily Texan. The term comes from the old typesetting mark (-30-) to denote the end of a line.
Daily Texan just a job, but one you can learn from By Ryan Young Senior Columist
@ oldryanyoung
juan figueroa | the daily texan staff
Opinion writer doesn’t know how she ended up in this basement By Laura Doan Senior Columnist @ledoan17
I didn’t really think I had that many strong opinions. I didn’t know anything about ledes or AP style. When I tried out for the Opinion department at the end of sophomore year, I was just a confused economics major who wanted to write — and to do it in my own voice. I walked into the basement with three half-baked pitches on my laptop and, for some unknown reason, the editors picked one. Then I just jumped into interviewing and turning around stories with short deadlines and three hour edit sessions. I walked down to the windowless DT basement twice a week to work with Alexander and the other
columnists, with all these people who thought and spoke with the clip of Aaron Sorkin characters. I was surprised how quickly I fell in love with it. I loved how busy and loud the basement was and how often it smelled like stale donuts. I loved working at a fast pace with smart people. And, surprising myself completely, I realized I loved a good argument. One and a half years and 28 columns later, and I’m now an opinionated person with an annoying bug for journalism that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to kick. I don’t know what happened. But I want to thank all the people who have made my time here so great. Thanks to Alexander who hired me and who was willing to help me brainstorm jokes about net-neutrality. Thanks to Janhavi and Caleb
for being such great first editors — simultaneously skilled and kind. I looked forward to having my columns torn apart and put back together by both of you. Thank you to all the current editors — Liza, Jaree, Cuillin, Josie — for inspiring me with your collective expertise, for removing “problematic” from my vocabulary and for cutting the adjectives from my clunky sentences. Thanks to Laura (the superior one) for being a fantastic editor-in-chief with incisive edits and such great vision for the department. My final hot take: The Daily Texan is really, ridiculously cool. I will miss this basement and the people in it very much. Doan is an English and Plan II junior from Fort Worth. She is a senior columnist.
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It’s been fun, but time’s up. Before this senior columnist rides off into the sunset, I’d like to reflect on the mission of The Daily Texan for the benefit of our future writers — and no, our job is not to write sensational columns about gentrification and TexMex. It is simply to teach people to write. True to the University’s motto, many of us in the Texan Opinion department stroll into the office with a determination to save the world, whether that means improving mental healthcare, cleaning up the environment, advocating for LGBTQ rights or fighting for a myriad of other personal causes. When I joined the Texan last spring, my personal mission was to dream of an Austin that was more equitable and civil — a city with some architecture more attractive than endless row homes and strip malls, a city with basic municipal services like sidewalks and, of course, a city with quality public transportation, where getting around doesn’t have to mean staring at brake lights on I-35. I was excited to write about those big ideas, and write about them I did. Some of my columns were more successful than others. For every hard-hitting critique of the University’s bombastic Be Safe rhetoric, there was a confused and muddled rant about UT shuttles and campus maps. By last fall, having parroted the same ideas over and over again, I was burned out. I felt I had become a mediocre pundit and that I wasn’t improving my writing abilities. Writing felt like a time sink, and I considered making that semester my last. But for reasons I still can’t fully explain, I decided to stay
on. Maybe it was the efforts of the editors to improve our writing skills by preparing presentations and inviting speakers. Maybe it was the exciting new transit projects under development at Capital Metro. Maybe it was Laura, who texted me over winter break to ask me to start writing weekly again. But this semester, I tried something different. I narrowed my focus to campus-centric stories that students would care about. More “Will Amazon pick Austin?” and less “Why you should give a crap about the city’s impossibly complicated land development code.” (Don’t worry. You shouldn’t). I realized that as columnists, our audience is you, the students and staff at UT. Sure, we aren’t saving the world, but we’re producing interesting and relatable commentary — and while that’s not exactly earth-shattering, it’ll do just fine. I outlined my 30 column last semester. The plan was to gently, but firmly criticize the Texan for losing sight of its educational objectives. But that’s not really true. You guys taught me to use my voice — to start projects and just get out there and talk to people. For example, I’ve used my new journalism and networking skills to start my own public transportation blog. To the Texan’s newest and future writers, embrace your job and the new learning experiences that come with it. Just remember that writing for the Texan is not the end-all-be-all, but a stepping-stone to greater things. What exactly that entails is left up to you. To this transportation columnist’s readers and editors — thank you for riding, all of you. This is our last stop. Young is a computer science senior from Bakersfield, California. He is a senior columnist. Follow him on Twitter @ryanayng.