As an aspiring journalist I constantly find myself in the battle of how much of myself I should put in to my work. I want to be a journalist which means delivering hard facts and learning to recognise what counts as "news". However, separate of my desire to educate the public on current affairs I am also driven to put in writing the questions that I ask myself and the thoughts I have about what is occurring in our society. This begs the question to me, could my desire to put my thoughts in the public forum hinder my professional integrity?
I have strong opinions on many of the topics that I am well versed in, but if I publish these thoughts do I risk future employment at the fault of being bias? I strive to be a professional and to separate my inner writer from my professional journalist exterior but if a potential employer was to stumble across a particularly opinionated piece I had produced at the urge of my lectures to "just publish something" could I lose my dream job?
In addition to being of particular concern to those of us hoping to make it in the media I think this fear is relevant in any industry. The more of ourselves we put into something we produce the bigger the risk of it being rejected and when there is so much of ourselves in a piece of our work we just can't help but be hurt when it is rejected.
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