How a project over Richard Nixon’s presidency led to a career choice 10 years later
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“I think journalism gets measured by the quality of information it presents, not the drama or the pyrotechnics associated with us.” — Bob Woodward
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Like many other little girls, I took the whole “dream big” advice seriously. If you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, at 8 years old, I would’ve told you, “I want to be the first woman president, and my priority after taking office would be to paint the White House lime green because it is my favorite color.” Thankfully, I have two wonderful parents who have always fully supported any aspirations I’ve had throughout my life (including the two months following the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when I wanted to be an astronaut).
This career aspiration led me to a hyper-fixation on learning the history of different U.S. presidents, which made me prepared for the end-of-the-year presidents project my second-grade teacher had assigned.
I sat at my desk unable to sit still as my teacher passed around a yellow smiley face cup filled with the names of the U.S. presidents on tiny slips of paper. When she finally stopped at my desk and it was my turn to draw a president’s name, I tightly closed my eyes and dug to the very bottom of the cup in hopes of drawing John F. Kennedy, or one of the Roosevelts. I unfolded my paper and opened my eyes only to find I had drawn Richard Nixon. My excitement about the project quickly turned into panic. I knew nothing about Richard Nixon or his presidency. My teacher looked over my shoulder and exclaimed, “Oh, you are going to love reading about him!”
Mrs. Ganong was right, I immediately fell down the rabbit hole that was the scandal of Nixon’s presidency, and specifically, I became infatuated with reading about Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post investigative reporters that brought the truth of the Watergate break-in that would lead to the downfall of Nixon to light. Dreams of becoming the first female president and having a lime-green White House immediately flew out the window. I wanted to be just like Woodward and Bernstein, exposing all the president’s men when I grew up.
As the years went by and I got to high school, I was hesitant to ever join the school newspaper. Being from a small town in East Texas, where generations of families tended to never leave, it always felt as though certain things seemed to be based heavily on the political aspect and not on the merit of individuals. I’m not a person that normally shies away from anything, but this was something more serious to me. I didn’t let this keep me from wanting to write and having a secret stash of my high school newspapers in my backpack, covered in inky blood after meeting the wrath of my red pen. They always say that a good writer is usually a well-read person, so everything I had learned about journalism up to that point had been from reading the news and teaching myself.
In August 2016, I had just started the first semester of my freshman year of college. I was attending Kilgore College, a junior college about 20 minutes from my hometown. I had declared my major as journalism and joined “The Flare,” Kilgore College’s student publication — this would end up being one of the best decisions I ever made for my experience and growth as a journalist.
On the first day of classes, I attended the newspaper staff meeting. I was there to just listen and learn from returning staff members, it was probably the quietest I’ve ever been in my life and I left knowing that I was sure I had made the right decision declaring journalism as my college major.
I would sit in my major-specific classes, soaking in every word and applying it to the work I did for “The Flare.” When the time came for me to write my first article, I had never been more nervous in my life. My first article was fewer than 250 words in the right-hand corner of the front page. If you are familiar with my work now, it is once in a blue moon that I turn in a story of fewer than 500-1,000 words. When the paper was printed, I picked up a copy every time I saw a newsstand on campus that week and although it is far from the best article I have ever written, I keep a clipping of it in my physical string book for sentimental reasons.
After that first article, I began writing more and learning the ins and outs of journalism, from page design to photography. With the help of playing sports growing up and the countless hours of ESPN I watched with my dad throughout my life, by the spring semester of my freshman year of college, I became the sports editor. This journey would include covering a lot of softball and basketball games and a gnarly Apple watch tan line that lasted the entire spring and summer of 2017.
Through the newspaper, I met my friend/mentor Jamie Maldonado and started working as his intern in the summer of 2017. I had applied to become editor-in-chief of the newspaper and wanted to give it a redesign completely. Jamie helped teach me his newspaper page design and Adobe InDesign knowledge. That summer, I was able to create an entire mockup of my new design that included a completely customized newspaper flag, because some of the letters in the font I wanted for the flag didn’t look like my vision (If you looked up perfectionist in any dictionary, it would just be a picture of me smiling). This redesign showed how serious I was and I ended up getting the job as editor-in-chief.
My first edition as the editor-in-chief was an X-files-inspired back-to-school guide I titled, “The Flare Files.” Since the paper went to production during the last week of summer before the semester started and there were no students on campus, I had to get creative for the front page. I recruited my boyfriend at the time to dress up as Fox Mulder and I dressed up as Dana Scully and without doing any justice to Scully and Mulder, we power posed outside of Old Main. I took a photo of a large silver photography beauty dish, turned it into a beaming UFO with the help of Photoshop and placed it over our heads. According to the insights and post engagements on Facebook, this edition gained us the highest readership we ever had and encouraged me to keep up the hard work.
A few weeks after the high of my first edition being a success settled, on Sept. 15, 2017, with the help of my staff, we produced an edition of the newspaper that would be one of the most meaningful accomplishments I have made in my career.
As editor, one of my roles was to design the front page every week. That week was Suicide Prevention Week and I wanted to create a front page that was impactful enough to get the important statistics and resources regarding suicide and suicide prevention across and draw the readers to stay for the content inside. I worked with the staff photographers and bounced off ideas for a photo illustration.
One of the photographers on staff understood my vision and she photographed someone with a semicolon tattoo grasping for another hand to pull them up. I ran this with an infographic of statistics and a blurb about suicide prevention week. This would go on to earn me an Individual First Place Columbia Gold Crown Award for Page One Design, beating top contenders such as Harvard, Yale, Ball State and the University of Pennsylvania.
During my collegiate journalism career, I won more than 20 awards at both state and national levels, but my individual Columbia Gold Crown Award is one of my proudest accomplishments.
After my semester as editor-in-chief, I decided I wanted a role on the newspaper staff that allowed me to focus more academically because my goal was to transfer to a four-year university, so I became the publication’s managing editor and the design editor of The Flare Magazine that came out annually during the spring.
After my time at Kilgore College, I decided to transfer to Texas State University in San Marcos, where I majored in journalism and minored in political science. During my two years at TXST, I focused on diving deeper as a writer and learning the ins and outs of politics.
At 25 years old, I still fully plan to become the next Woodward/Bernstein.
Taliferro is a reporter at the Hays Free Press/News-Dispatch. She can be reached at allison@haysfreepress.com.
