I've been watching insane amounts of "How I Met Your Mother." Seriously. Since things are starting to wrap up here at school, I've had a lot more free time than usual--resulting in watching the first three seasons of this sitcom in the span of about two weeks. I'm not sure how many of you watch this show, but the character Barney Stinson (played by Neil Patrick Harris) is the epitome of all the negative male stereotypes: basically, he'll do anything (and everything) to get laid.
During a conversation a few days ago with my friendPrisha, I came to the realization that--if you replace 'getting laid' with 'getting the perfect story'--student journalists are just like Barney Stinson.
We're obsessed with finding the perfect stories and interviewees, and will exert as much energy as possible to make everything work out for us in our favor. When you're a student, and don't have the power of something like the Beeb or The Guardian behind you, it's not always easy to score the necessary interviewees. So, you have to make yourself sound as enticing and important as possible. This usually involves replacing "student" with "freelance journalist" when trying to score a coveted interview or press pass.
Barney is obsessed with having a different woman every night, and will pull stunts like this in order to get what he wants:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJrmtSnJA-Q&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
And just like Barney ditches the girls after his womanizing shenanigans, once we jump through all of the hoops and get what we want, the interview, the press pass, etc, that's usually the end of the relationship. We have everything we need to put together a good story, and that's it!
But fortunately for us, most interviewees don't end up hating our guts after we've had our way with them...
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvTpj2j0q7o&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01]