Sean: A Professional Journalist?

Although I'm not a professional journalist, I like to think that I abide by journalistic standards, I'm not just going to write a blog post to spread unconfirmed rumors or gossip.* I give credit when quoting other articles or using photos taken by someone else. Sure, I received a cease and desist notice from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette years ago for using one of their photos, but I did give the photographer and newspaper credit before removing the picture from my blog.

I mention this because I entered the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists' annual journalism contest earlier this year in the blog/online news category. The general guidelines state that work entered must be of local interest or about the workings of Washington, D.C. and the greater DC metro region. Since I write about a wide variety of topics, including many about Pittsburgh, I entered my May 2022 post about the end of the Celebrate Fairfax festival, which was the largest annual festival in Northern Virginia but is now extinct.

SPJ announced the winners at the recent Dateline Awards held at the National Press Club. Since I was not one of the three finalists, I did not attend the ceremony/dinner. I later learned that the winner was WTOP.com. Although I knew that I entered a category in an open division, to quote John McEnroe, YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!

WTOP is a radio station and institution in DC. The station delivers local news and gives traffic and weather updates every 10 minutes 24/7. The website is a companion to the radio station and probably has dozens of employees between writers, editors, photographers, web designers, marketing staff, and more. How can Sean's Ramblings compete with that? The answer: it can't. 

It was nice thinking that I could be in the same category and room as professional journalists, but I guess I really haven't reached that level. Yet. Now if I can just get a media pass to a Washington Nationals game or the Oscars or Emmys, maybe one day I could be considered a professional journalist. 

* Please don't look at my previous 3,300 blog posts to see if this is accurate. If I did write a post spreading unconfirmed rumors, it was probably in an attempt to be funny and was not intended to be serious.