The DU Clarion is no The New York Times. Despite its longevity and successes and history of passionate staff members ever hoping to improve it, the Clarion remains a fairly small and casual endeavor. Strong content and talented contributors aside, I spent four years at DU surrounded by a surprising number of professors and students who didn’t even know the school had a newspaper. It was a publication often dismissed as a “liberal rag.” Given this reputation, it feels crazy that for me, the DU Clarion was absolutely and completely, more than anything else in my 22 years, life-changing.
I often find myself sorting things into two categories: pre-Clarion and post-Clarion.
Pre-Clarion is my quiet upbringing in New York, my love for music, theatre and writing. It’s my family, my high school friends and my dreaming of traveling across the country for college. It’s my wanting to be an astronaut, then a teacher and later a novelist. It’s my being in the closet. Pre-Clarion led all the way up to my first day at DU, when I, as an awkward and anxious incoming freshman, approached the organization’s table at the club fair.
I started out merely writing each week, but I quickly developed a taste for seeing my name in print. I got into photography, I was hired as Copy Editor and Arts & Life Editor and years later, the Clarion team eventually elected me as Editor-in-Chief. I was all in. I left behind a lifetime of being a willfully ignorant white kid who couldn’t be bothered with consuming the news. I declared a media studies major, and it became clear that my work in journalism should continue after graduation.
Post-Clarion, I was hired at the Chicago Reader, the city’s alternative and independent print weekly. I now work in administration and sales for the powerhouse publisher and LGBTQ+ activist Tracy Baim. I’m still writing and editing and designing, using my Clarion skills even more than anticipated.
While the Clarion was busy shaping my academic and career interests, it was also affecting my personal life. Through the newspaper, I met some of my first friends at DU. I met influential professors and mentors. I also met the love of my life, Monica, who was Assistant Entertainment Editor when I first started writing. Another Clarion staff member set us up—at one of the quarterly Clarion parties.
Post-Clarion, Monica and I live together in Chicago. We’re coming up on two years together, and I couldn’t be happier. We constantly reminisce about the impact that the club had on each of us, separately and together.
Post-Clarion me is better. I think a lot of people are better post-Clarion. Regardless of reach or readership or reputation, the Clarion is doing great things at DU. I can only hope that there are others who are equally touched by it.
Taryn graduated from DU in June, 2019 with bachelor’s degrees in media studies and English, with a minor in gender and women’s studies. Her hometown is Canandaigua, N.Y., but she currently lives with her girlfriend in Chicago. Taryn works at the Chicago Reader weekly newspaper.
