At the Clarion, we have a rule that you only get one exclamation mark, one moment of pure emotion and excitement that we can let come through in our work. But, I have seen my fellow editors, our writers and photographers break that rule a million times. Every week we walked into the office and produced a newspaper full of passion and love. We created something that, despite its apparent lack of exclamation marks, embodied hours of late nights and early mornings, countless interviews and photo ops, weekly meetings and constant editing. It was our passion and it breaks my heart that I must say goodbye, but I am so excited to see how it grows once we leave.
When I started with the Clarion, I was ready to take on the world. I was confident that I knew what was coming my way, and I was excited to meet it when it did. I was ready for the late nights of research and the scathing articles I would write. I was ready to cover protests and scandals. I wasn’t prepared to meet the amazing people who became my peers and friends. I wasn’t prepared to find a family in the Clarion, and as I look back, it is the late nights editing photos and articles, the random food runs to Starbucks, Illegal Petes or Subway, the Clarion parties and the strenuous debates about pop culture and politics that I will miss most.
I have learned so much over the last three years. I learned about DU. I learned about Denver. I learned about my peers and the students of DU and I learned about what I wanted from myself. We learned to push ourselves beyond our comfort zones. We learned to write and rewrite and rewrite again and again until our work was good enough for the title we held. I learned.
I want to thank the people I have worked with over the last three years. I want to thank Grace Carson and Dustin Amick, my first editors, for bringing me into the Clarion and pushing me to be better at all times. I want to thank Taryn Allen for running an amazing newspaper and helping us to grow with each and every issue. I want to thank Daniela Santos for writing news stories that were so phenomenal that no one could look at the Clarion as a joke. I want to thank Grace Houser for being such an amazing co-editor and helping me to become the editor I am today. I want to thank Maya Piñón for reading and rereading articles just to make sure that we could publish and for convincing me to keep at it even when the photography section was falling apart. I want to thank John Poe and Ryan Ninesling for giving me the chance to prove myself and for helping to create this amazing team that I now call family. Beyond all of that, I want to thank you all for being some of the most amazing people I have ever met.
Though I have to say goodbye to the Clarion and to my friends, I believe the paper I have grown to love is in capable hands. I wish our incoming editors all of the best moving forward. I cannot wait to see how this paper grows over the coming years. Thank you DU students, alumni and professors for being so supportive of the Clarion and our work. Now for the exclamation point I have waited three years to write, farewell!
