Daily stress of the Daily Mississippian

Meghan Hutchinson

September 27, 2011

Journalism 377

Overcoming the Stress to Write for the Daily Mississippian

Most people have the luxury of working a 9 to 5 schedule, although in the real world breaking news and events often occur after 5 p.m. It is up to our local newspapers to be able to inform us as soon as possible.

Writing for the Daily Mississippian at the University of Mississippi is a great way to get your foot in the door for writing in a newspaper. The Daily Mississippian is picked up and read five days a week by many of the Ole Miss student body, and the Ole Miss community. Every Monday through Friday we are able to read news articles, amuse ourselves with comics, and enjoy the perfected layout of the Daily Mississippian. You would think that by the way the magazine flows and how interesting it is to read, that publishing 10,000 newspapers five days a week would be a breeze.

Newly appointed editor in chief of the Daily Mississippian and a senior at Ole Miss, Cain Madden gives insight to the hard work and stress that it takes for the Daily Mississippian to be published five days a week.

To become editor at the Daily Mississippian was a stressful process in itself, he said. “We had to be interviewed by a group of alumni, current students, journalism faculty and journalism professionals in Mississippi,” he said. “My panel was about 15 people and they all had a lot of questions for me.” To be editor not only do you have to deal with the stress of publishing a newspaper everyday, but the stress of having to complete school work as well. When asked what the most stressful part about being editor of the Daily Mississippian is “no matter if you’re sick, if you have a test the next day, you have to be at the Student Media Center until midnight and then you have to go home and study and do homework.” Even though the amount of stress is extensive, Cain said he thinks that it is all worth it. “One day when I graduate I will have a big edge on a lot of my competitors coming from the Meek School of Journalism.”

Although Cain proofreads and checks the final copy of the Daily Mississippian, Cain does not write the whole newspaper alone. There are writers for each section of the newspaper. Senior secondary education and public policy double major, Meghan Litten of Hattiesburg, writes almost one a week for the Daily Mississippian. She first had the idea to start publishing in the Daily Mississippian after sitting in at a panhellenic meeting. “My first article ran the spring of my sophomore year. I was on panhellenic council and was really angry when I heard some remarks regarding recruitment.” she said. Meghan is known for writing some controversial pieces in the Daily Mississippian about our student body, and politics, but she said that people’s responses do not stress her out.

“What stresses me out the most is that the DM is not sometimes respected on campus,” she said. “People judge the DM and they don’t look at what you’re writing separately and they look at the mistakes. People call it the ‘daily mistake’.”

Just like Cain, Meghan says that all the stress writing for the Daily Mississippian is worth it. “The DM puts out 10,000 issues a day and people get to read,” she said. “The cool part is that you might just change somebody’s opinion.”

When you graduate high school, nobody can fully guide you as to how to be stress free in college. Jackie Certion who works as a counselor and teacher at the Academic Support Center, at the University of Mississippi teaches a freshman class on how to handle stress and juggle your life in college.

“I teach a class for freshman who go on academic probation and how to stay on top of your school work while, you also live your college lifestyle”.

Many students become stressed when all of a sudden they have three tests and a paper due the same week. Jackie tells us how students could prepare without being too stressed out. “I tell the students to be prepared. You’re not going to get what you need through osmosis”.

Jackie Certion’s finds that what hurts students in their academic careers is that students have “free-time”. According to her “there is no free time in college. Whenever you think you have free time and are procrastinating you are setting yourself up to create stress”.

Having the back up and support from other students and editors at the Daily Mississippian help Cain Madden get through his days. It also helps him get home at somewhat of a decent hour every night.

Sources:

Cain Madden: cain.madden@gmail.com, (601)-754-9999

Meghan Litten: mmlitten@gmail.com , (601)-270-0501

Jackie Certion: jcertion@olemiss.edu , (662)-915-5970