EICs say final farewell to The Inkblot News

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EICs Izzy Cavazzoni and Courtney Kushnir look back on their time with The Inkblot.

Like almost every other editorial that we’ve written, we waited until the last possible second to start putting our thoughts on paper. This one especially because it’s our last, our farewell to the past year and all of the time and effort we put into The Inkblot. In essence, we’re delaying our goodbye to a chapter of our lives that further molded us into the young women we are today.

Izzy Cavazzoni

One of my earliest memories of freshman year was seeing former editor-in-chief Hannah Rosie Wallach stand on a table in 107 and lead the first Inkblot meeting I ever attended. She shouted and delegated with confidence and spirit. She never gave up, even though she was doing what I believe is a two-person job all by herself. She was passionate about journalism and The Inkblot. And she inspired me to continue to attend meetings and actually write.

I don’t think that I set out my freshman year to become an eventual co-editor-in-chief of The Inkblot. It took a little bit of time for me to truly learn how to write in a journalistic fashion; I didn’t know anything about AP Style, collecting interviews or unbiased reporting. In fact, I came to CHS to pursue broadcast journalism, and print was a medium I viewed as antique.

Still, I quickly learned that print journalism and the work Courtney and I have done for The Inkblot is anything but ancient and unimportant. Throughout this experience, from learning to write in AP Style to discovering a true passion to leaving my mark on The Inkblot, I’ve grown professionally and personally. The nights were long and sometimes Courtney and I got frustrated or hit a roadblock, but we’ve learned to persevere, to put our best foot forward, and sometimes accept defeat.

I’m not sure where life will lead after high school, but I’m eternally grateful for being given the opportunity to feel a rush on every distribution day, to see the news cycle from beginning to end, and to uncover one of my greatest passions.

 

Courtney Kushnir

I came to CHS thinking I wanted to be a journalist. But as you can imagine, at the ripe age of 14, I had no concept of what that meant. I took one class in middle school called “Writing the News” where I learned nothing about news writing and instead spent all marking period writing an opinion piece about Ed Sheeran’s music. I don’t think the teacher mentioned AP Style once.

Working for the Inkblot has taught me a lot. Not just about the wild world of running a publication, but about myself. I now know that, despite being young and naive, I was right all those years ago. I found my passion in journalism, a passion for writing.

This year there were tears. There were late nights at our houses, nights at Starbucks, nights at school, nights where everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. But none of the bad times could cancel out the feeling we got when we tore open that white box from School Paper Express on distribution day. I don’t know if I’ll ever have children, but I imagine that seeing a new freshly-printed issue compares to seeing your newborn baby for the first time.

To Dylan, our money man, I say thank you for keeping us grounded. When we were near tears, you kept us going. To Mrs. Mulshine, I say thank you for lending us your expertise. You dedicate so much time and knowledge to this paper, and I will never forget all you’ve done for us. And to Izzy, I say thank you for being the most organized, powerful, amazing co-editor-in-chief in the world. I would never even dream of doing this without you.

This is a bittersweet goodbye. On one hand, senioritis has kicked in and I’m glad to have passed on such a huge responsibility to two new, extremely capable editors. On the other hand, running the Inkblot has been one of the greatest honors, one of the greatest joys of my life to date.

 

Signing off for the last time, forever AP Stylish.

#Courtzy