By Jonathan Battaglia
Edited by Khan Singleton
My interest in journalism began as an adolescent media consumer, more specifically, reading the sports page of The Washington Post as I ate breakfast before school. Eventually, I discovered other sections of the paper, different newspapers and finally other forms of journalism.
For a pre-teen, I had a decently refined sense of good journalism, but I quickly learned good journalism is not easy to create.
Working for my high school newspaper in Virginia and then for USC's The Daily Gamecock taught me how to write, interview and edit properly. Most importantly, I learned that I loved telling stories. That's why I'm a journalism student at USC.
The journalism industry is changing, they say, but I will always contend that good storytellers have a place in society. I think they do now more than ever.
Today, we have an amazing amount of access to information, but almost no time to make sense of it. The best journalists make their living sifting through this information and creating narratives worth a few minutes, or more, of someone's time.
I want to write pieces that make people stop, think and reflect – a valuable thing in this day and age. Whether my future has me working for a media organization, a nonprofit or in government, I just hope I'm doing something I'm passionate about and getting people to talk about what's really important.
