I’ve never liked reading newspapers.
I find them uncomfortably large when opened, and I’ve never been able to turn their pages without them trying to fall all over the place.
They’re supposed to be effective conduits of important information but have the navigation scheme of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel. I start at the beginning, get cut off, have to jump to the middle of a random page to get to an ending and then I have to start over.
It’s frustrating because I like information. I like good writing and good journalism. I like knowing what’s going on in the world around me. The revenue from the print product still pays the bills, but it has always seemed to me a poor medium for what it’s supposed to do.
So I joined the Daily Bruin’s Online department as a programmer to help improve its website. On the internet, I like the newspaper a lot better. The content fits comfortably on a phone screen, the navigation is coherent and articles can be searched for and saved without the physical overhead. Compelling stories can be enhanced with or told exclusively through audio and video.
However, I’ve since learned there’s something valuable about having to make something people can touch, though the benefit isn’t necessarily for the readers. The pressure to fill a physical space that would otherwise be conspicuously blank creates a sense of urgency and purpose. Writers, editors, graphic designers, page designers, photographers, illustrators and copy editors have to work together to ship a product on a daily basis. It creates a stupid amount of stress for everyone involved. But having to work parallel to those kinds of pressures gives us as programmers content to work with and projects with deadlines.
As a result, the Daily Bruin’s Online department has become an unlikely incubator and home for talented developers. We’ve had people on our staff become interns at Facebook, Yahoo and Tumblr. This summer we have contributors that will be working at Microsoft, Adobe, Hulu, Disney, Bloomberg, Ernst and Young and startups in New York. We have graduating seniors that will be taking full time jobs at Google, Amazon, JPMorgan and IBM.
Most impressive of all to me is the young woman who came in here with no programming experience at all, and after less than a year she has an internship that will lead to a full-time web developer position after she graduates this spring.
The people here are talented and hardworking and would have been successful anywhere, so I consider myself lucky to have had the opportunity to work with them. It has been a rewarding experience to see people learn, collaborate and grow as they create visually stunning pages and cool interactive features. I’m excited to see what the people here do next.
So while the Daily Bruin produces a physical paper that I find outmoded, it produces people that I find remarkable.
Zou was the Online editor from 2014-2015 and an Online contributor from 2013-2014.