It is interesting when you sit down to tell your own story, because you realise that is has been out there for a while, delivered in snippets that you didn’t even recognise a news for anyone.
I never thought, as a journalist, that I had much to say about myself, but what can you do in a time where journalism is under attack, but tell your own story? I read the story of Spider Jerusalem in some old graphic novels that one of my nerd boyfriends had, and then Hunter S Thompson books one of my girlfriends lent me.
I understood the potential for the power of the written word very early on – you learn the impact from the school reports they write on you. You see it in the bad words they write on your locker.
I started a school newspaper called Testament and an underground newspaper called Rant early on, and I made enough money to pay for my membership to the National Union of Journalists for Students. I was a citizen journalist, but I knew all about the inverse pyramid, the unbiased voice, and the three sources. I learned fast, and I learned well. Two hundred words per minute in shorthand, like Reuters demanded.
I never expected England to become a warzone, and I sure as hell didn’t expect to become a government target. Who ever expects that they will end up locked in a trans-temporal prison for telling the truth? Who ever thinks they are going to get busted out of said prison and released into a time where they have become a cult figure that has a following that fights the liars on the frontlines? Not me – that’s for damned sure. But here I am, and I suppose this is me telling you that this column is going to fuck with every establishment figure it can. Welcome to Jenny Fred’s Write, Right?