My article on the Insomnia Film Festival was published in today's Lantern! Don't tell anyone, but I stashed about 15 copies of it in my room; it's my first article, and it's something that I'm sure my parents and grandparents will want copies of.

I can't say I'm satisfied with its publication—The Lantern screwed it up quite a bit. I submitted it to the arts editor, who said it looked good (again). Apparently, it still needed translating into "journalese," because the article that appeared in today's paper had been obviously fiddled with: A few words had been changed, paragraphs were broken down even further, faculty titles and dates were reformatted—nothing too major. I guess I'm just not fluent in journalese yet.

They didn't do a very thorough translation. They caused at least two cases of severe subject-verb disagreement, omitted random punctuation, and the name "Byran" inexplicably became "Scott." (I felt the need to apologize to Bryan for that, even if it wasn't my doing.) I hate that my article has grammar errors and inaccuracies in it through no fault of my own. But that's journalism. I'm on the bottom of the hierarchy. I have no say in the fate of my words.

But before all this, before I even had the idea for that article, I had an idea for another. My idea was simple: I wanted to write an article on the Buckeyes Blog program. Like a good subordinate, I emailed the editor with my suggestion. I never heard back. I just found out today that someone else had been assigned my idea. Even further, it's intended for front-page news.

Sure, maybe they didn't want me on that assignment because I'm in the program. Or maybe it's because I'm only a freelancer and new to journalism. But they didn't even tell me. They didn't even respond to my idea, and that's why I'm not happy with them.

But hey—it's journalism. Not just journalism, but it's The Lantern. The daily publication that spends their time uncorrecting prefectly correct articles for printing. The paper that runs articles condoning and even promoting the use of illegal ADHD drugs to stay ahead of the curve. You heard me right.

So, I can spend my time hating them for being unprofessional and incompetent, or I can do what I can to help them do their best. And I'll choose the latter every time. (But next time I have an idea I'm making it clear that either I write it or no one does.)