I had hoped that the much-detested ‘college conversation’ would get easier once I got in. But even though I am happy with where I am going, there is one question I fear, one last mine in the minefield, so to speak. Forget the college question, I’m talking about the ‘major’ question. 

And a major question it is – when I tell people I have my sights set on journalism, I am routinely met with a taken-aback look that indicates I will spend the next 10 to 20 minutes defending my decision. 

This routine is consistent without regard to age, political party or level of acquaintance. I have met that look from my fellow classmates, coworkers, strangers who’ve struck up conversation and family members. 

People look at me like I sold out, or like I just said I want to be a tax collector. At this point, I am a little shocked and slightly hurt by the sheer number of people that seem to dislike journalists. But why don’t people like journalists? 

Historically, journalism was enabled to become a proper industry when Europe adopted Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press (which ought to ring a bell regardless of what history class you took), but even before that, written correspondence about political and economic affairs were circulated, essentially newsletters that were further disseminated by the receivers. 

With the movable type, these letters transitioned into little bound booklets and then foldable broadsheets like what you are used to seeing, after a paper in Amsterdam realized a folded sheet would carry more room for news. These papers were given out in the UK by “mercury-women” who were women named after the Roman god of messages, or delivered to the revolution-starting coffee shops in France. Dailies were pumped out every morning, gazettes offered the official government version of news, and tabloids helped shape the course of pop culture. People were desperate for the news: during Louis XIV’s tyrannical rule of France, French citizens supplemented their doses of officially dispersed royal propaganda with subtle radicalism and real news in ad sheets at the back of the paper. To be a journalist at this time wasn’t all that strange a career plan. 

The desire for quick news steadily grew in Europe, but journalists often felt the need to supplement their salary with political blackmail. The period of journalistic history is curious in its sharp contrast between an optimistic story of ambitious frontiers of a new industry and shamefaced tactics to earn a quick buck. 

Blackmail threats and deals could be found on the front page of some of these papers, and was seen more as a way to make a living than profit off of malicious intentions. Clearly, journalism had some kinks to work out. 

Another shameful period in journalistic history was the Yellow Press in America – AP U.S. history students, don’t look at me like that. These were a couple decades at the turn of the last century of true sensationalism: scandals and crudeness, exaggerations and a worship of the decree of whatever advertisements went on the page. I think that may be the idea of the press still held by people today, despite being over a century later.

I’ve heard people tell me to make sure I am unbiased by reading both extreme ends of the political tabloid spectrum, to make sure I don’t do it for the money, or to never sell out to corporations rather than tell a story properly. To the first point, I say that two wrongs don’t make a right, and that consuming unbiased news is far better than bouncing between CNN and Fox News. And the idea of doing it for the money… as if! Doing it for the money isn’t really possible after front-page blackmail ceased to be a practice. And though it’s a valid sentiment, I have found that most journalists already strive to never sell out. Notably, the majority of people who harp on this last point don’t actually read the news. 

It doesn’t help that both political parties in America are slandering the press. The far right defaults to accusing everything of being fake, and the left prefers to consider unsatisfactory headlines biased. The ‘centrists’ abstain from reading the news entirely. 

There has been a total erasure of the good parts of journalistic history in the minds of the people who have been taught to distrust it. Watergate, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s exposure of Nixon for his corruption (mind you, there was real danger. Nixon and his gang plotted to kill another journalist via LSD drugging) is a shining part of our history. 

And so is Julie K. Brown’s investigation into Jeffery Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, and the Boston Globe’s team of investigative reporters who uncovered the years of sex abuse coming from the Catholic Church, and Nellie Bly checking herself into a mad-house to report on the terrible treatment of women and showing off her investigative chops way back in 1887. 

So, despite the tiresome conversation, I’ll keep defending my major. Journalism is simply the act of caring enough to ask, and in turn to tell. It’s putting values in people’s stories and investing – and having faith – in the future. I’ll keep writing, and you will keep reading, maybe a few times removed due to social media, and maybe one day people will like mercuries again.