Why I do what I do

Diego Sorbara
Autobiography

How I really got into journalism is by far one of the most unglamorous stories of my life. It isn’t as exciting as when I decided I had to go to Canada and ended up wandering around Vancouver at 3 a.m. with a crazy Australian I met a few hours earlier; it isn’t as funny as the time my mom dropped the Christmas ham on the floor and had me trim off the usable meat to serve to the family. I got into journalism because I love language.

We have to rewind all the way to 1983 to understand my love of languages. I was born on a blistering hot December day in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It wasn’t until I was two that we moved to the Chicago suburbs. From a young age, I was brought up in a world split between English and Spanish. I began to appreciate the nuance of language and the way words came together to tell stories.

What really fueled me was my French class. As we would learn more about French grammar points, the subjunctive, the pluperfect, the imperfect, I would start learning about those same points in English. All of the sudden, language, both French and English, started making perfect sense to me. Comma usage wasn’t just an intuitive thing anymore; there were actual rules for where those suckers go. Semicolons weren’t just decoration; they had an actual purpose.

Initially, I wanted to be a French teacher. My mom, ever the realist, quashed that dream fast. “You’re a horrible teacher,” she told me. “The kids would hate you.” Ouch. It’s true, though, I’m not what you’d call a “people person.” However, my high school journalism teacher clued me into something called copy editing; she even gave me the doorstop to her room, an AP Stylebook.

My parents, however, didn’t care much about career path. My dad loves CPAs and engineers. “You know, Diego,” he reminds me every time I go home, “those accountants make a lot of money.” The father of my best friend, a seasoned reporter for the business page of the Chicago Tribune, would often explain (read: rant) that journalism is where the human soul goes to die.

Coming to MU only cemented the fact that I was meant to live behind a desk. While most journalists love to “hit the ground running” and to “chase” stories, my favorite part was the writing and revision. Really, I disliked intruding into the lives of others just so I could write a story. But the largest weakness I have as a journalist is that I’ve always been an incredibly shy person. The hardest thing for me to do is lift that phone or tap someone on the shoulder and ask for an interview. I knew after writing a few articles that I was not cut out to be a reporter. How I passed Missourian, with a good grade to boot, is beyond me.

It wasn’t until I made it to the production side that I found a niche. Finally, there was a place where people were concerned about the craft of editing and about honing skills, a place with an atmosphere of teamwork and not competition. I love editing. I don’t think about it as a game of Space Invaders, zapping out errors and ambiguities. It’s about taking the work of someone else and making it shine.

Despite people questioning me about my aspirations, I’m steadfast. Last summer, I was an intern at The Hartford Courant. Aside from becoming adept at evading dodgy characters in the slums of Hartford, where I foolishly ended up living, I realized that there’s nothing finer than the smell of terrible newsroom Chinese food, bad coffee and copy ripe for the editing in the evening (I never, however, got the hang of getting up early). This summer, I’m heading up to work at the night copy desk of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. But after August I’ll be pretty much unemployed. So if you see someone with a “will edit for food sign,” please be kind; I might’ve read your work once.