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RYAN RIGNEY The Meek School has, for me, been more than just a place for learning. It has offered an environment filled with gregarious people who are determined to work together to stay on—or ahead of—the cutting edge of the journalism field. In an industry as turbulent as this one, that matters.
Growing up in Poplarville, Mississippi, newspapers were not a significant part of daily life. I thought the local paper was just something you got your name in if you made honor roll or shot a really huge deer. I had no interest in newspapers, but in high school, I signed up for a class called Journalism 101 with Mr. Stephen Seal. Other students said that Seal gave you freedom to do whatever type of projects you wanted, and that sounded appealing. Seal allowed me to develop a blog—it was harder to make one back then — and run news for the school website. I fell in love with writing, and Seal fed my interests, introducing me to magazines that publish great storytelling and encouraging me to develop my abilities. Soon, I figured it out: Journalism was what I wanted to do with my life. A few years later, I took my first class in the Meek School. Now, I’ve just finished my senior year. Much has changed in these last few years. The Meek School has evolved, becoming a great place to learn how to produce multimedia. I’ve become a demonstrably better writer. I finally put on the “freshman fifteen,” although it took me four years to do it, and I’m still skinny as a stick. Perhaps as many things have stayed the same. There are still no conveniently located bathrooms in Farley Hall. I still bite my fingernails to smithereens every time I write an article. Curtis Wilkie, who contributed a great deal to my development as a writer, still has the same epic beard and inimitable, rumbling voice. More worryingly, whenever anyone brings up “the future of print,” everyone still throws their hands up in the air and says, “I don’t know, somebody ought to figure that out.” Sometimes Meek School professors will follow up this admission by gesturing wildly at nearby students and declaring, “This one is up to you guys to solve! You teach me! You teach me.” I don’t have the solution to print’s troubles either, but I spent the last four years just trying to get published as much as possible. I sold stories to as many magazines as I could, wrote a book about people who’ve made famous iPhone games, and was hired as a regular contributor to WIRED. (They make us format it that way, I swear.) My logic was: If I write more, I’ll 72 MEEK SCHOOL
get better at writing, and then I’ll be better equipped to adapt to whatever the changing times call for. I briefly flirted with a backup plan, in case this whole getting paid to put words together thing doesn’t pan out in the future — I pulled together some friends and started a company to develop video games. We made two of them, one for Xbox and one for iPhone. It was a learning experience, which is what people say after they spend a lot of time and money working on a thing that doesn’t sell very well. (This is ironic, because my company won first place in the 2012 Ole Miss Gillespie Business Plan Competition. Thankfully, it wasn’t a business execution competition.) Throughout my time at Ole Miss, I’ve spent two hours working on my own projects for every one hour spent attending classes or doing homework. During all this, I’ve had an unbelievable amount of support and instruction coming from the Meek School staff. Talented teachers, like Vanessa Gregory and Mark Dolan, took special time out for me to help me grow in areas where I was lacking. Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni allowed me to take part in more than one of his many projects, including the crazy and unique ACT Experience conference. I could always count on Charlie Mitchell to be good for a half-hour, unscheduled and off-topic discussion about ... well, just about anything. I’d come into his office looking for advice about some issue or another, and leave with both the advice I needed and a grab bag of stories and opinions about topics too varied to count. The Meek School has, for me, been more than just a place for learning. It has offered an environment filled with gregarious people who are determined to work together to stay on — or ahead of — the cutting edge of the journalism field. In an industry as turbulent as this one, that matters. Yes, some parts about the future of journalism seem sort of scary. The economics of online publishing don’t seem to be getting much better — the word “BuzzFeed” gives me a headache — and a few magazines I’ve contributed to have shut down for good. I even had the undeserved honor of writing the last ever five-star review for GamePro, which at the time of its closing was the longest running video game magazine in America (The review, by the way, was for Minecraft.)
The Meek School will have to continue to adapt, as it has done in the past. As news is further decentralized, and it becomes even less common for journalists to get one job at a paper and stick with it for years on end, skills in the art of freelance writing and unsolicited story pitching will become more valuable. I learned these skills because my circumstances demanded that I learn them on my own, but many students would benefit from being exposed to them via instruction in a classroom setting. That’s something that the Meek School could, but does not, currently offer. I’ve balanced this essay with the usual amount of measured caution about the future of journalism, but don’t take that to mean that I’m worried — I’m not. When the rules in a game change rapidly, that’s just an opportunity for the most innovative and hardest working players to leap ahead and build something new and great. If I manage to become one of the lucky ones who can do that, I’ll have my experience with the Meek School to thank. Ryan Rigney is a 2014 Meek School graduate.
