Shoham Geva: Daily Editor in Chief 2016

I joined The Michigan Daily a few weeks into my freshman year, mostly on a whim:

I wasn’t on my high school newspaper, and I thought I wanted to go into business, so it didn’t make much sense. But like so many other people, something kept drawing me back, which is both the genius and the curse of this place. In part, it was the challenge. The Daily has a time-honored tradition of throwing you directly into the deep end if you’re willing. This pushed me way outside of my comfort zone, starting the summer I found myself running the news section after my freshman year, all the way through my serving as the 2016 editor in chief. It was also just how cool our work can be. From covering the State of the State as a freshman, to talking to voters and covering candidates during the past two elections, the Daily has let me witness and chronicle history.

And I was also drawn by the community. I’ve always wanted to be at the Daily because of the people around me at 2am, production after production, who encouraged me to to come back the next night; who asked me questions about who I wanted to be and what we wanted to build; who are the best examples of commitment I’ve ever seen -- and who never said no to newsroom scooter races and not doing our homework.

I ran for EIC because I never seemed to run out of those reasons to stick around — the challenge, the work, the people — and I wanted to help move that forward. We covered campus during a tumultuous and impactful time that I hope we did justice.  The job is an indescribable experience, but it’s truly incredible the amount of work full-time students commit to this publication, as well as the people that trust us to help give them voice — and what results from that, whether it was national attention on our work or scrutiny on local officials.

Explaining my time at the Daily, especially my EIC year, to pretty much any non-Daily person usually ends in a wide-eyed stare, and then the questions: You spent how much time there? Didn’t you miss out on seeing friends, on going out? When did you do homework? (A lot, and yes and 5am). And then they’ll usually ask whether it was worth it, which doesn’t have as easy an answer. I’m going into the public sector after graduation, not journalism, which I’ve known I wanted for several years, and I’ve pursued (nonpartisan) work each summer to that effect.

But my school years have always been all about the Daily, because this place has taught me what a leader looks like and what it really means to be a part of something bigger than yourself, and that alone would make it worth it. A former EIC perhaps put it best: “It's strangely comforting to know that the best job you'll ever have you had when you were 20 years old.”