Newsweek has been my favorite publication ever since I grew out of J-14 and Tiger Beat. It’s been the bible I read on Sunday mornings, my textbook for learning how to write and my career inspiration.

A few weeks into my summer at Northwestern, I found out that some journalism cherubs would have the opportunity to visit Newsweek’s Chicago Bureau – somewhere I had never been and immediately desired to see.

I had gotten my first-choice field trip in previous weeks, as did everyone else I had spoken to, so I assumed this trip would be no different. I’d visit where I hope to one day intern and report, journalists have inspired me and thousands of others work and the writers of my political encyclopedia create their stories.

The day before the trip, I found out which of the four media trips I would be going on. I looked at the names under the Newsweek section, yet mine was missing. Finally, my eyes scrolled down the page to the Chicago Sun-Times section, where, at last, I found my name.  

I had never read the Sun-Times before. I had seen it in newsstands only a few times throughout the past few weeks of my summer. Despite the fact that I was told the Chicago Bureau of Newsweek was only one room and was the home of few employees, I still wished I could be on that trip, in that group, visiting a publication that I felt I was a part of.

When I heard the Sun-Times reporters and editors speak, their words and passion caught my respect, my admiration. When they led us into an actual editors’ meeting, I was in awe of the editor-in-chief who grumbled at his mumbling reporter. I gazed at the editors table. In my mind I participated in their debate over which stories should go on the front page: Drew Peterson, Devin Hester or cancer-causing cell phones.  We walked into the news room. I witnessed page designers laying out pages for the next issue, reporters focusing intently on their articles. I witnessed a substantial newspaper that I was proud to be standing in the office of.

I not only learned about the story of Drew Peterson, the dynamic of a newsroom, or the fire that blazes in stressful editors’ meetings. I not only discovered the shockingly disproportionate ratio of males to females on editorial boards. But I discovered a universal, journalistic truth: It does not only take one news publication to protect American democracy, freedom of speech and the innate right to liberty. The shield protecting those rights is a mosaic and needs not only Newsweek but also the Chicago Sun-Times to be complete.