Thank You Letter: A non-news article

A meta send-up to breaking article protocol

Image supplied by: Journal File Photo

The news section at The Queen’s Journal owns my soul. As an Assistant News Editor, every week I write anything from two to five articles. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but I’m also thankful for this opportunity not to write a news article.

For this article, I didn’t have to interview anyone or spend one hour transcribing a twenty-minute conversation. I didn’t spend three days begging the AMS to provide me with a one-sentence comment and nobody drunkenly came up to me to scream about how much The Journal sucks. 

I can do anything I want with this article. I can tell a joke, though I don’t actually know any jokes. Good thing I’m not writing for Golden Words

I can do anything I want with this article. I can tell a joke, though I don’t actually know any jokes.

In preparation for this article, nobody suddenly decided they wanted to take back their two-hour interview I already transcribed. No one asked me to break journalistic ethics and change what they said because they “don’t like the way” they sounded. 

This article’s preparation process didn’t require me going to a three-hour AMS Assembly. I also didn’t get any the free pizza Assembly provides, though, so that kind of sucks. Those AMS people and all their f—cking pizza—but please, dear God, don’t get rid of the pizza.  

Crucially, talking about how grateful I am to write something other than a news article means I didn’t have to talk to anyone. I was able to write this entire piece lying on my couch in sweatpants, drinking wine.

I wasn’t bound to a single topic and could just randomly switch subjects to hot dog stands if I wanted to. I think hot dog stands are wonderful, and the sight of one on a summer day fills me with joy. Then I can jump right back into the main topic of my article, no questions asked. 

The nature of this non-news article means I can be as descriptive as I want. 

I can say this article is beautiful, lugubrious, unique, scintillating, saturnine, adroit, garrulous. Yes, I had to Google fancy English words since the restrictive word count of news articles have beaten them out of me.

This article has no scandals, tragedies, or depressing news about the school losing all its money. I can even make stuff up if I want to; Daniel Woolf lives in a mansion on Mars! 

Above all, though, I’m thankful for the opportunity to let students know what’s happening every week. The Journal keeps both the student government and University accountable, and I’m honoured to be part of that process every single week. 

Tags

News, thank you letter

All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.

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