Even my shitty little college newspaper was not immune to realizing that they needed to cash in, needed to “join the conversation” if they wanted to survive. I was too naive to understand any of this then. When the editors decided to run my sample column as my actual first column and place it prominently on the front page alongside an editorial apologizing for their “dreadful history of exclusion” and promising to “do better,” I took it as a sign of my talent.
