It opened with a subtle moan. Syncopated congas beat in tandem with a steady kick drum as a funk guitar and brass section made their entrance. Tenor harmonies coaxed the disco accompaniment into submission—the honeyed melody, equally seductive. Marvin Gaye had become an early favorite of Rosa Warren, and after hearing the amatory serenade “I Want You,” she was enraptured.

“Just the beat, the rhythm, the flow if it. I thought that was genius,” said Warren. “I feel like I have an old soul. I love oldies. That’s my feel-good music when I want to unwind.”

It’s also the music that helps Warren, 22, explain her decision to become a journalist. Take, for example, the solemn lyrics of Gaye’s “What’s Going On.”

Warren noted that if he were alive, Gaye would be about the same age as her grandfather. In fact they went to elementary school together.

Still, she said, the problems Gaye sang about more than a generation ago have not gone away. And as a journalist, she hopes to tell stories that help shed light on them.

“It’s just like things are still happening that nobody’s really addressing,” Warren said. Living in D.C., she said, there are “some parts that are neglected.”Warren enrolled in North Carolina A&T State University in 2006, a print journalism major, but soon learned that her real passion was copy editing.

“Copy editing is the forgotten profession,” Warren said. “People behind-the-scenes are just as important, and I want to be a part of that and help people understand that there is more to the article that you see in a paper. There is a process behind that.”

At the New York Times Student Journalism Institute, Warren will spend her days scouring copy for Oxford commas and double entendres — a skill she hopes one day will land her a career in magazine journalism after her graduation this December.

– Kendra Desrosiers

Listen to Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You”

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