Tiffany Boggs: Young Voices From the Shore

The Mirror is excited to introduce Tiffany Boggs. Tiffany is an inspiring journalist who has written for the Eastern Shore Post and is actively involved with her university’s student-run newspaper at George Mason University. She will graduate from George Mason in December with a Bachelor’s in Communication and aims to kickstart her journalism career in Northern Virginia. The Mirror was very impressed after meeting her, and invited her to provide perspectives on being young and living on the Shore.

Young Voices from the Shore: The Journey and Naiveté of a 22-year-old Journalist By Tiffany Boggs

When you are in your twenties, you think you know it all, but for me I didn’t know it all when it came to journalism.

Let me just admit that I didn’t know what I was doing, and my ego was high, but is it really surprising from a 22-year-old writer?

From the time I was in middle school, I wanted to be a writer and have my voice heard.

I remember when I had my first article published in the Eastern Shore Post, I was an 18-year-old intern and seeing my name in print for everyone to read was a big accomplishment for me. With no training that was my first taste of what journalism was like.

I went back to writing for the Post after I graduated from Eastern Shore Community College in 2022 and that’s when I ran into the real side of journalism. The mistakes were very loud and clear and said that didn’t know everything that needed to. No journalist should be met with a call from their editor saying the organization you wrote about was not accurate.

And that’s what happened. I didn’t interview the right people, the sources I researched were not valid, yet with my own naiveté I thought I did everything right and didn’t question where I went wrong.

It’s important for journalists to know who their target audience is and the importance of what they’re taking away from the story. But I didn’t know any of that at the time.

A story I had attempted for Women’s History Month lacked everything you can image a journalistic piece to lack. The story did not match the tone of the Eastern Shore Post, I did not interview people right away when writing the story, and it lacked relevance to the audience. I was basically writing a three-page essay for a college history class.

It was because of that story I came to the realization that I wasn’t being a journalist. I completely strapped the piece and rightly so. The readers of the Eastern Shore Post wouldn’t have been interested in a history lesson about Native American Women, especially if it had nothing to do with the Eastern Shore, Virginia.

Reflecting back on my past work in the Eastern Shore Post, it makes me laugh how many mistakes I made. If any of my journalism professors from George Mason University saw my work, they would be on me, I can hear the criticisms now.

From those two years, I learned from all my mistakes. If I hadn’t written for the Eastern Shore Post, I wouldn’t be where I am now. My time at school, I realized the most important thing for a journalist to have that I didn’t two years ago, and that’s taking criticism.

For anyone who is interested in Journalism, you are going to make mistakes and that’s okay. My advice is to go out there and learn, practice, be confident in talking to people, and take constructive criticism well.