The field of Journalism has changed over the past couple of years in many ways, mainly negative ones. The average “news” article you’ll find today contains no news at all. The journalism of today is hateful, politicized and oftentimes untrue altogether. It wasn’t always this way, though. When I entered my freshman year of high school at Rolling Meadows, there was no global pandemic. There was no presidential election and no nationwide protests against police brutality. I never imagined I’d be living in a world where news sources were trusted so little. 

Having been a student journalist for the past four years, I have been given a unique outlook on the changes journalism has brought for the United States. It is important to be the change in your community and The Pacer has given me the chance to do just that. 

I wrote articles about rising nationalism and even local issues like our school’s tardy policy. I felt that even by talking about issues our society faces, I was making a change. Is that necessarily true? Maybe not. However, The Pacer has given me confidence that when I speak, people will listen. As my final year comes to a close, I think about what I could have done differently and how hard the past few years have been on all of us. I am not the world’s greatest journalist and I never will be; but I can say I was a student journalist when the world stopped. 

I would like to take this opportunity to pass the torch to my junior, sophomore and freshman staff and let them know that as long as they write, people will read. Journalism is not a dying field, in fact, it is like a phoenix- rising from the ashes after its first death. I have the knowledge now to put the skills I’ve picked up from The Pacer into my major and my job for the rest of my life.

 I am extremely grateful for past Pacer sponsor Mrs. Deberge and current sponsor Mrs. Lussow for putting journalism at the forefront of my brain Freshman year enough that I could write some articles as an Editor-In-Chief during my senior year. Speaking your truth does not always pertain to journalism. The Pacer taught me how to articulate my intense passion for minority rights without anger and irrationality. The skill of bipartisanship is lifelong. 

To wrap up my very last article on The Pacer, I will end with a quote from political theorist Karl Marx, “To fight freedom of the press, one must maintain the thesis of the permanent immaturity of the human race… If the immaturity of the human race is the mystical ground for opposing freedom of the press, then certainly censorship is a most reasonable means of hindering the human race from coming of age.”