In a few weeks, when I meet about 50 first-year students in my introductory journalism classes, one of the first things I will tell them is to keep the words “I,” “me,” “we” and “us” out of their stories. Journalism, after all, is about telling the stories of others and not drawing attention to yourself.
That is—or at least was—the conventional wisdom of the field during the two decades I worked in daily reporting. It’s what I learned at j-school and it remains, for the most part, the backbone of solid journalism.
Janice Tibbetts 