An open letter to open letters
Have all other forms of journalism failed us?
As a freshmen in her first year of immersion into the college journalism world, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Hell, I wasn’t even planning on immersing myself at all – I joined The Tab as a distraction to get over my old boyfriend (it worked).
In high school, I was the Senior Editor for our (less than noteworthy) online newspaper, which required I fill my English elective with ‘Journalism Into the 21st Century’ taught by two guys (some of my favorite teachers to date) who really hyped up real world journalism. So when I started following other publications online and writing for some, I noticed some changes in my Facebook feed that I hadn’t expected:
Open Letters.
I found these directed to a plethora of recipients including, ‘my high school friends,’ ‘my mom,’ and even Kanye West, and to put it simply: I expected more.
Why is it that this form of journalism, one that can be called a published diary entry, has become the norm on sites like Her Campus and The Odyssey? If these people really meant what they felt, why wouldn’t they just tell the recipient in plain?
Of course, there are exceptions, like MLK’s Letter From Birmingham Jail in which he calls out Alabama Clergymen for asking for a halt on MLK and his supporters’ protests for equal rights. Or Sinead O’Connor’s warning of the music industry to Miley Cyrus just after we met Miley 2.0.
But this stream of young journalists trying to make a statement by telling their mom ‘I love you’ via the internet isn’t going to make a lasting impact on their individual reputations. (ps. shout out to my mom– love you)
And what happened to other article formats? Where are the inverted pyramids, I ask?? Did something happen over the course of the past few years where other forms of writing were eliminated from the mainstream of college journalistic writing?
To be fair, there are plenty of articles that have been being published that are, in fact, not open letters. But why aren’t those the ones filling up my feed?
In conclusion, this is an open letter. To open letters. And I’m not exactly proud to have written an open letter given my apparent annoyance with their hyped presence in my social media world, so maybe we should all just stick to Twitter fights?