Spring Break
A Message from the Adviser
Issue date: 5/13/09 Section: Hornet 60th
The State Hornet was where I fell in love with journalism, and I remember the exact moment it happened.
It was the 1984-85 school year. The newspaper was headquartered in a skanky old trailer in what's now Parking Lot 4, which wasn't paved then either. We wrote our stories on typewriters, and developed film in a darkroom full of chemicals. We laid out our newspaper pages with hot wax, rollers, X-Acto knives and border tape. All totally state-of-the-art. Except for the trailer.
One day that year, fellow Hornet reporter Tom Biondi and I somehow scored an interview with Sacramento Mayor Anne Rudin. We, a couple of lowly college students, sat in her sunlit mayoral office and she gave us all the time we wanted to talk about current issues - the construction of ARCO Arena, leapfrog development in Natomas, you name it. It was magic - the mayor of Sacramento was talking to us!
Until that point, I'd thought of journalism mostly as writing, a placeholder career to keep me employed until I was ready to write the great American novel. But that was the day I realized that journalism meant meeting, talking with and learning from the most interesting folks around - then sharing it with the world.
What followed for me was more than two decades of fascinating conversations with the broadest possible spectrum of humanity: From the homeless of Palo Alto to the president of Estonia. From creek clean-up volunteers to the people who pioneered the earliest developments of the World Wide Web. From people who depend on the state for support to the elected officials who run the state.
And it all started here at the Hornet.
Now I'm back at Sacramento State as the faculty adviser to the Hornet, and it is a joy to help a new generation of young journalists discover that magic. I can see it in their eyes when they return from an invigorating interview, or do a staggering amount of work on deadline, or get an email from someone they interviewed or photographed saying, "Hey, nice job." Those are the moments that help you endure the endless ridicule of second-guessers and armchair quarterbacks who never faced the terrifying requirement that all their course work be published. And those moments are why students at the Hornet will pour more hours into this place than any class should ever take.
The newspaper industry may be in chaos, but journalism will survive, and the people who are students at the Hornet now are the ones who will carry the torch.
Congratulations to The State Hornet for 60 years of both serving the campus community, and serving as an incubator for generations of journalists. It's a pleasure and a source of great pride to be a part of this institution.
Holly Heyser, State Hornet adviser
It was the 1984-85 school year. The newspaper was headquartered in a skanky old trailer in what's now Parking Lot 4, which wasn't paved then either. We wrote our stories on typewriters, and developed film in a darkroom full of chemicals. We laid out our newspaper pages with hot wax, rollers, X-Acto knives and border tape. All totally state-of-the-art. Except for the trailer.
One day that year, fellow Hornet reporter Tom Biondi and I somehow scored an interview with Sacramento Mayor Anne Rudin. We, a couple of lowly college students, sat in her sunlit mayoral office and she gave us all the time we wanted to talk about current issues - the construction of ARCO Arena, leapfrog development in Natomas, you name it. It was magic - the mayor of Sacramento was talking to us!
Until that point, I'd thought of journalism mostly as writing, a placeholder career to keep me employed until I was ready to write the great American novel. But that was the day I realized that journalism meant meeting, talking with and learning from the most interesting folks around - then sharing it with the world.
What followed for me was more than two decades of fascinating conversations with the broadest possible spectrum of humanity: From the homeless of Palo Alto to the president of Estonia. From creek clean-up volunteers to the people who pioneered the earliest developments of the World Wide Web. From people who depend on the state for support to the elected officials who run the state.
And it all started here at the Hornet.
Now I'm back at Sacramento State as the faculty adviser to the Hornet, and it is a joy to help a new generation of young journalists discover that magic. I can see it in their eyes when they return from an invigorating interview, or do a staggering amount of work on deadline, or get an email from someone they interviewed or photographed saying, "Hey, nice job." Those are the moments that help you endure the endless ridicule of second-guessers and armchair quarterbacks who never faced the terrifying requirement that all their course work be published. And those moments are why students at the Hornet will pour more hours into this place than any class should ever take.
The newspaper industry may be in chaos, but journalism will survive, and the people who are students at the Hornet now are the ones who will carry the torch.
Congratulations to The State Hornet for 60 years of both serving the campus community, and serving as an incubator for generations of journalists. It's a pleasure and a source of great pride to be a part of this institution.
Holly Heyser, State Hornet adviser
Be the first to comment on this story