I REMEMBER the incredulous looks my friends gave me about three months into my internship when I told them I was working on a story about bags being stolen at sports stadiums.
"That's so mundane; nobody will care about things like this," one of them said. "Why don't you work on bigger, more interesting stories?"
I can understand why they thought that — I felt that way too when I first started at The Straits Times newsdesk five months ago.
Not that I didn't have fun, or learn a lot — it was definitely exciting, and challenging, to cover big events like the opening of a new MRT line, or piece together the story behind a grisly murder.
But then there are days when you write about snatch thefts, or small charities, and can't help but wonder, "How consequential is all this stuff, really?"
But then I'm reminded by what a colleague once mentioned: "No story is completely useless — as long as it impacts some people it's good enough."
And I'd like to believe that's true. Take the bag story for instance — as long as people read our story, and wise up with their valuables, I think we can be proud of our work.
Sure, local "heartland"-ish news might not be as "glamorous" or typically as headline-grabbing as business-related or foreign stories.
But covering these issues has taught me an invaluable lesson: that the man in the street and the very real issues he confronts every day, big or small, matter and are of real consequence.
If anything were to draw me back to the newsroom after I graduate from university, it would be this — not any kind of promise of a high-flying job with lots of meet-and-greets with corporate types.
After all, where else would you get the fun of attending a government press conference and hunting in the woods for durian thieves in the same day?
This is Goh Yi Han's last blog as an intern at The Straits Times.