School Press Conferences and the Death of Campus Journalism

It would not be an exaggeration to say that campus journalism is the reason I am who I am today. It has taught me to question oppressive norms, fine-tune my writing in order to balance cynicism with hope, and look at society through the lens of what it could be rather than what it is. However, to become empowered by campus journalism is also to become empowered enough to critique it.

In recent years, campus journalism has become synonymous with school press conferences (SPCs). To a niche group of people in the Philippine academic world, SPCs are the competition of the school year. Being a campus journalist, or better yet, winning the said contests became a sort of status symbol within a school community. While events like this can certainly become an avenue for young minds to hone their journalistic skills and become immersed in the world of the press, one can argue that it has also taken the spotlight away from truthful storytelling and has instead focused it on the glory that comes with winning. This part, I am ashamed to admit, I have been complicit in.

I would be lying if I said the thought of representing our school in a contest did not cross my mind when I signed up for our elementary campus publication. Victory was intoxicating; to be rewarded for something you worked so hard to be good at was a feeling that one could not easily stop chasing. Although victory is not necessarily a bad thing, to the impressionable young mind of a fifth grader, it was the only thing. And so, practice sessions became a matter of studying the weaknesses of other school publications and embodying their strengths, writing the way they would, but better. It was not passion that got me through the long nights of researching and proofreading, but an unhealthy desire to become better than my peers. My editorial articles would be written for the sake of writing them and my sports pieces done half-heartedly; what they don't tell you about how easy it is to become driven by competition is that it is just as easy to become disillusioned by it. Campus journalism became less of being a voice for the voiceless and more of making sure that my voice stood out from all the rest. This is where the death bells start ringing.

What happens when you pay too much attention to the contest technicalities, the loopholes that can be exploited, and the way "things have always been done" is that not much room is left for critical, revolutionary, and sincere journalism. While I have had the fortune of meeting many passionate student journalists over the past years, they are, sadly, in the minority. So much of what campus journalism has become is molded from the box that SPCs have put it in. When we think "campus journalism", we immediately think "contest" because that is the only thing we have been told campus journalism is good for. Campus journalism is not glory. More often than not, it is the opposite of that. Campus journalism is to be indignant. It is to be concerned. It is to be enraged. It is to translate the noise and symphony of the world into a language that becomes small enough to be absorbed but not too watered down that it loses its value. Campus journalism is to read up on press freedom and find out that the press has not always been free. It is to scroll through names posted on a news website-- student writers imprisoned, tortured, and killed for wanting a better tomorrow. It is to read an archived eulogy of a young journalist whose name has been forgotten by time, his bright future dimmed by a hundred shrapnel from a police explosive thrown at a rally. Campus journalism is to feel the smallness of your youth and become so appalled that you create something.

To reduce campus journalism to merely something to be won is a grave disservice to the many who fought for our freedom to be able to take part in it in the first place. More than the school rivalries and awards ceremonies and certificates and post-event ice creams are the sacrifices of those who truly believed that the student's pen is mightier than any sword out there. We are able to take part in competitions such as SPCs because somebody somewhere believed enough in the future to fight for it. We come from a long line of people who refused to take no for an answer. Campus journalism is to become a product of the stories history has told. Like everything else in the world, campus journalism, is, by nature, flawed. It would be unfair to attest its imperfection to SPCs alone because doing so would be turning a blind eye to root issues such as poor government funding, lack of support from school authorities, and the social stigma campus journalism brings with it. In a time where young students are being red-tagged for simply speaking their mind, one cannot be blamed if they choose to altogether neglect the political side of campus journalism and instead focus on the much safer, more rewarding side that are competitions. However, one thing campus journalism isn't known for is it being safe. The very essence of it is to break new grounds and topple down barriers. It goes left when everyone else is turning right. It stays and asks questions when the crowd has already started heading out the door. Safe is good. But it is not campus journalism.

Campus journalism is dying not because of School Press Conferences, but because of our belief that SPCs are all there is to it. SPCs are integral to the promotion of campus journalism, yes. But no, it is not its sole definition. Who are student journalists after the certificates have been handed out and the trophies have been posed with? Are we nothing more than the name of our school publication and the contest category we wear on our ID tags? When the celebrations are over, is there no more reason to continue the fight?