STUFF JOURNALISTS LIKE

#64 college newspapers

 Every addiction has a beginning. The same is true for journalism. 

For many journalists, the addiction to low wages, sitting through endless city hall meetings and letting out a high-pitch squeak every time they see their name in print started with their college newspaper. 

Like wearing hemp jump pants and doing keg stands, most journalists got their start in college because it sounded like a good idea at 3 a.m. after a two-day study marathon.

So at the disappointment of countless parents, young college students make the ill choice, dripping their business major and promising future for journalism. 

But journalism like their alma mater newspaper because college newspapers set unrealistic and idealist expectations of journalism.

It's at their college newspapers where journalists first learn to ignore friends, responsibilities and hygiene to meet deadline.

College newspapers typically do not have to worry about profits. Working at a college newspaper usually means not worrying about rounds of layoffs. And sadly, college newspapers are better funded then their for-profit professional counterparts. If there is doubt, go look inside any college newspaper and compare the rows of gleaming new Mac with the the out-of-date artifacts found in a working professional for-profit newsroom.

If college paper's really wanted to prepare students for the real gritty world of journalism, they would just have a 300-pound guy punch each student in the crotch when they entered the student newspaper office. If student journalists can survive four years of getting punched in the junk then they can survive the newspaper business.

And more than any other time, journalists are reminded how much they like college newspapers when they make their annual pilgrimage to their own stomping grounds.

When journalists return to their college newspaper, usually in the same car they drove in college, they relive the glory days of journalism without consequences, sleeping in the newsroom after long deadlines and where they used to stash the hootch. 

Funny how some things don't change. 

#92 fedoras

There are certain iconic images that simply can’t be separated from some professions.

Gavel = judge. Tractor = farmer. Guitar = musician. Rabbit = magician. Jim Beam = NASCAR driver.

For journalists, their legacy will forever be encapsulated in the timeless, the classic - the fedora. It is the ideal hat of the middle class or the common man that the journalist breaks his back for every day.

Functional and stylish, the fedora was initially a convenient placeholder for press passes. But over the years it devolved evolved into a representation of the hard-working journalist braving the elements to report the news while looking quite stylish.

Like a nobleman in a top hat, journalists can always be spotted chomping on the butt of a cigarette below the dark brim of their well worn fedora.  

Fun fact: Seven out of 10 journalists copulate while wearing their fedoras.

Like journalists themselves, nowadays fedoras are slowly fading from the newsroom, instead turning up on effeminate pop stars. However, journalists still wear fedoras, you just have to know which empty desk covered in dusty boxes to look behind.

There will sit an old curmudgeon cursing at the computer while punching the keyboard with two fingers, fedora slightly askew and whiskey seeping from the pores. This journalist may not know a blog from a RSS feed, but he makes that fedora look damn good.

Pictured is veteran newsman Mike Nemeth of Salinas, Calif., shot by famed photojournalist Scott MacDonald. Check out more of his work at www.scottmacdonaldphotography.com.

Are you a journalist who doesn't leave the house without your fedora? Send us your picture - StuffJournalistsLike@Gmail.com

Here's North Carolina reporter Lindell Kay rocking not only a fedora but also a Hawaiian shirt at a murder scene.