I get to my second class of the day. Intro to PR. Lots of seniors, taught by a head university official guy in a suit with a melodic kind of voice that sounds perfect for public radio or important announcements. He says “Know your audience.”
That refrain, so ever popular in my Journalism education continues to haunt me. I have NO IDEA who is reading this bi-weekly ‘narishkeit’ as my grandfather calls it. That’s pretty much Yiddish for BS. No relation to Bachelor of Science, the degree I will ideally obtain in the next few years.
So Science. Journalism is a Science. Funny, since I didn’t even take science class senior year. I have always wanted to help people but in my mind, there’s just this giant void between my future and the field of medicine, the sexiest science around.
Well, I think Journalism can be sexy. Lois Lane and Carrie Bradshaw come to mind for the win. Or Anderson Cooper. Too bad he’s gay. Off topic.
On topic.The intersection of Journalism, Sex, and my Audience – this column.But, as previously mentioned, I don’t ‘know my audience’ well enough.
Sure, HerCampus attracts college women. Duh. But I doubt anyone browsing HC would find my article randomly, embedded under the ridiculous amounts of content here. One person read me after www.ron-shapiro.net blogged about me, which was cute. But in general, I can’t pinpoint you all.
You’re masked behind your screen, coded by some IP address sent to my webmistress, never even noted by me.
Most likely, it’s my facebook friends reading, who get this link fresh to their newsfeeds each time I post. But I have 2000something ‘friends’ and besides a general age and a vague demographic.You can’t really put Scarsdale JAP and my dorm security guard and my British aupair from first grade in the same category.
Or can you? One things unites every one of my darling readers: a curiosity.
Whether that’s a curiosity of Stef or sex or [insert why you’re reading this here], that’s cool. Glad to have you.
So, when my NPR-smooth voiced prof announced that you’re responsible for giving a three-minute speech on any topic next week, I freaked a little.
I’ve been writing this column for 20 weeks and I don’t ‘know my audience.’ How can I ‘know my audience’ and give an awesome speech next week?
Just like I write this column. About vague topics related to sex because everyone has that in common.
It’s in our human nature. We all will most likely engage in copulation at some point in our lives because it’s biologically how we’re designed.
To me, writing this column is like literary sex. It can be awkward to start it out, but once I get into the flow of the writing, it becomes energetic, exciting, fun, free-flowing words onto the screen with no problem and then suddenly, it’s done. And I read it over a little – and I am relaxed and happy and feel that kind of enigmatic but aphrodisiac bliss that is the ultimate opposite of writer’s block.
So, that’s the intersection of Journalism and sex.
If you think I’m going to get up and elaborate on that in a V-Monologue way in front of my bespectacled 50something professor, you are quite misdirected.
But, I do know I can talk about Sex (or at least I can talk about talking about sex) for three minutes.
I’ll let you know how that goes. Wish me luck.
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