From My Point of View: Everything comes with a ‘Price to Play’

By Nathan Walls
Editor

There is a price to everything. No doubt about it. After spending three years working for The Pine Needle, I have learned that lesson many times over.

A song by one of my favorite bands, “Staind,” seems to remind me of that fact each time I play it. “Price to Play,” is the epitome, in my opinion, of how hard it is to achieve goals that you have set for yourself, while trying to remain a good person as well.

The first few lines of the song make me think about the decisions I have to make as a person and as an editor: “We fail to see how destructive we can be. Taking without giving back. ‘Til the damage can be seen.”

Unfortunately, I’ve had to make some staff changes since I’ve been the editor of this paper. Every boss has to do those things and I am no different.

Friendship is something I have to overlook when deciding what it best for this paper, and I guess to those people that I have let go , passed over for a position or not rehired, my decision was pretty damaging to them.

You really never know how a person is going to react to something until you tell them the news. So, in that case, when bad news is delivered to a staff member, the damage can be seen.

Even more so, my social time has waned since I took over the reigns of The Pine Needle, and that is the biggest regret I’ve had about this job. I’ve never been big on severing friendships with people and, thankfully, I really haven’t had to do that since I took over here. A lot of times, though, I wish I had more time to sit down with my friends and just see what they have been up to.

It’s a damaging feeling to know that you don’t have much time to hang out with your friends. One of the nicest things about college is meeting all kinds of people and getting to know them better as you go along. So far this year, however, I have received more of a chance to enjoy some of my free time, due to the fact that the staff is the best one I have worked with.

Journalists, for the most part, are viewed as badgering, arrogant people that only care about themselves. At least, that is the feeling I get when I’ve had to ask tough questions.
More lyrics from “Price to Play”: “And all you seek, and all you gain. And all you step on with no shame,” sheds light on the practice of journalism.

But there is a difference between asking hard questions and being a jackass.

Several events occurred on campus last year that I went to as soon as it happened. Some people thought it was very rude of me to try and get quotes from someone when something dramatic had just taken place. The same can be said for other staff members that were sent to different events.
If someone doesn’t feel like talking, they have the option of not giving us a comment or just waiting until a later day to talk, if the newspaper deadline isn’t too close, though.

The bottom line is, the newspaper industry isn’t around to withhold news - it’s here to disclose it. We have to report the facts, no matter how much someone doesn’t want us to.

We don’t throw parties and get excited when we report a story objectively that has news in it that someone doesn’t like. We just take it as doing our jobs.

To sum it up, we seek information, we gain information, we might step on people’s toes by asking hard questions every now and then, but we do try our best to get the job done without feeling shameful by not living up to the integrity of the profession.

Lastly, “The price you pay to play the game,” can be interpreted as life, a job, a situation you’re facing or whatever. There are rewards and consequences for everything we do. I’d like to think that as long as you are trying your best at whatever it is you are doing, you should reap benefits. I hope that my role as Editor of this paper will have been worth all the time I’ve devoted to it. Afterall, what would have been the point if nothing good comes out of it?