Experience as a Senior Staff Writer
Alternatively Titled: My Experience as a Senior Staff Writer for The Brown Daily Herald
My expectation for the school newspaper, before I started college, was that the Daily News was handled by a bunch of hipsters who probably drank black coffee and listened to R&B as they churned out breaking news, postulated strong opinions about grammar, and – occasionally, when the fancy struck them – went to class. Honestly, I wasn’t all that far off the mark? The Newspaper (because it really is a whole Entity in and of itself) definitely has strong grammar opinions. In the case of The Brown Daily Herald (which henceforth will be abbreviated as BDH), we don’t use the Oxford comma. This causes me pain with every article, but I’ve come to accept it as the BDH standard!
The sheer amount of work associated with running a college newspaper is no myth. For our daily newspaper, right now in 2024, the norm is at least eight articles published daily and one print newspaper placed all around campus once a week- on Thursday. Each article is copy-edited and fact-checked thoroughly- this means that, when we publish, we’re as satisfied as possible with the standard of our writing and, non-negotiably, with the information we’re sharing. The amount of work a writer must put into an article is also pretty surprising, considering much of the news has to do with events happening on campus or around campus.
We track down sources and conduct interviews, which are recorded and transcribed. The BDH standard is at least 3 sources per article, which means at least 3 hours of interviewing a week. I cover Science and Research, which is an incredible column to write for. It’s a lot of fun because I’m always learning about new research happening on campus.
Just as fun as the actual newspaper work is the vibe of the office.
There’s always music playing, and there’s always at least a handful of people in the office, working on “prod,” which is what we call our sessions to review the articles. Prod jams (the prod playlists) are really fun and varied; very granola, but they definitely set the mood for a warm and jolly workspace. Not much actual writing happens in the office, at our school newspaper- most of the work in the office is review, publishing, and recording, for our podcast and multimedia desks. One remarkable part of working on a school newspaper is that people always have brand new ideas that don’t have a precedent- and teams of students can learn 
whole new skills to make those ideas a reality.
We have people who study all kinds of different subjects: English nonfiction, public heath, applied mathematics, statistics, physics, chemistry, aspiring doctors like me- but all of whom have a love of journalism in common! There is also a wide array of fun activities hosted in our office- from Herald Happy Hours to a weekly staff celebration and meeting (Thursday nights every week of the year, where we bring in new story ideas and chat over pizza). It’s a lot of hard work but it’s a lot of fun- and there’s something very awesome about writing for your alma mater and seeing your name in print. 📝
