I’ve been suffering through an identity crisis of sorts for a while about journalism. I’ll be honest.
I will not go into detail about the reasons except for one. That reason is the constant battle I have with determining whether or not something is “newsworthy.”
I think about things in very strange ways and I come up with grandiose, big ideas. I want to write about huge concepts, like humanity and love and life and depression and sorrow. On the other hand, it’s hard for me to come up with the ground-level immediate stories that I am so frequently encouraged to find.
I realize that this is an issue. I realize that my conceptual brain and my constant mental refabrication of every idea Terrence Malick has probably already thought of. But I can’t stop thinking that way. I’ve tried to think more concisely and in more solid terms — but even when I think up more basic and tangible ideas, they don’t give me any satisfaction.
I’ve talked to people about interviewing and one of the common responses that I’ve seen interviewees have when they’re approached is, “Why would you talk to me? I’m so boring.”
But do we really expect any other response? The media perpetuates the concept that only blood, drama and “uniqueness” (whatever that means now) can make a headline. Of course people think they’re boring. I hate having to describe to strangers why I’m talking to them not only because I see that people really do think they’re boring but also because I hate how “average” stories are considered to be less valuable than “relevant” or “immediate” or “current” or “timely” stories. Perhaps dubbing one story “timely” and another story “untimely” (or, in other words, not important enough) is an overestimation of the journalist’s responsibility anyway. Do we really think we are so all-knowing that we can determine that one person (or one event) is more important than another?
I don’t think so.
I even heard the other day people talking about people and their stories. One person said the same thing that I say: how everyone they’ve met is interesting and how they tell their sources that. But then the second person said, “Well, everyone has an interesting story. Some are just more interesting than others.”
That’s something fundamental about journalism that I just can’t get behind. And maybe that’s the source of one of the frustrations I’ve been having.
I will continue to explain to people that I have never met an uninteresting person (it’s true). Sometimes I go into interviews for some specific purpose but I’ll end up talking to them for three hours just because I’m interested in what they say and how they act and how they’re interacting with me and my questions. I test people with personal questions; I pull back to respect their boundaries. I laugh with them and tell them I understand how weird an interview is because it’s weird and at certain points I can’t be anything but transparent. Yes, I will drink beer with them. Yes, if they ask me to withhold something (for a verifiable and understandable reason), I’ll probably do it.
I’m a person and the people I interview are people too.
And if journalists are the ultimate purveyor of humanity, I think we need to escape the veil of newsworthiness and tell those stories that may not be “relevant.” Every interview I’ve had has showed me that everyone has some little interesting thing about them, and I want to be the person to talk about that interesting thing.
People think journalists “use” them and they’re right to think so. Journalists do “use” people to their advantage. They have a “newsworthy” story and they call the right people and get quotes and write the “newsworthy” story afterward and turn it in and never look back. Nobody’s entirely happy in that situation.
I’ve brought up ideas for stories but they’ve been shot down because they’re not timely enough or newsworthy. But they’re newsworthy to me. And they should be newsworthy to everyone else, including people in a newsroom.
What comes first to my mind when I try to defend myself and defend my broad and vague “mist
There’s a quote that is often used to describe the “man bites dog” concept in journalism: the concept that news will cover a man biting a dog because it’s unique but will never cover a dog biting a man because it’s average and run-of-the-mill. It’s a great concept because it’s true. I feel like journalism sometimes falls into its out self-dug pit when it either sensationalizes some oddball story, exaggerates another and ignores another.
Anyway, the quote is, “You never read about a plane that did not crash.”
I guess I want to write about that plane. I want to write about people who are “boring” and who aren’t “newsworthy” and who really are just…people.
Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own. – Carol Burnett
And my rant goes on.
I want to write about this before I forget about it: my friend today made a very interesting point about journalists/journalism students learning multimedia for the “future of journalism.” He made the point to say that, yes, there is a future for multimedia in journalism but the sad thing is that the jobs where these skills may put us a head above others are dwindling at best. Learning multimedia is good for us, but the jobs we’re looking to court with these advanced new skills may not even be there by the time we get to the job pool. That’s a sad thought…but it’s true.
I think the argument that “Journalism is dying” is fatalistic and kind of annoying, but I can’t deny that it’s true. Yes, the newspapers are struggling. And multimedia will help them stay ahead of the curve. But, as my friend said, this new technology doesn’t necessarily mean new jobs. I think that young journalists like myself need to find a way to
Another issue with the future of journalism is the journalism-as-a-business model. Tell any journalist (or budding journalist) that journalism’s a business and expect a gasp in response. Newspapers have been grappling with profit and how to get it and still run good copy really since newspapers started making money. Now it’s become even more of an issue as profit seems to go by the wayside as “citizen journalists,” bloggers and the Huffington Post have dutifully declared themselves as the “future of journalism”, effectively sending harrumphing journalists into despair and good writing into the black hole of forgotten crafts like quilting.
But I don’t think that this change in perspective about what journalism is in the new age means that all journalism has to change. We don’t have to be little sheep following the SEO and aggregation shepherds of the internet.
But this also doesn’t mean that we should be stubborn about ourselves, either. I think that we can be extreme about our approach to our role as journalists — we either go all out or none. Maintain print or go strictly online. But this approach is very short-sighted. I think that there are ways to not only embrace both the print and the online structures, but also enhance the role of the reader and the opinion of the reader.
Like I said before, I think that readers today are really underestimated. It’s wrong to assume that they prefer a short tidbit of information over an in-depth long-form piece of journalism. It’s also wrong to use readers as pawns in the constant tug-of-war between newspapers and their advertisers. Now, I think short, scanner style stories are really important for helping readers wade through the unimaginable amount of information there is to process every given day.
But as we become bogged down with so much content (and advertisement), I feel as if citizens have become confused about the real meaning of journalism. Is its goal to pump out as much content as it can, with a lack of regard for what’s really important? Is the finish line more important than the actual race?
I think there’s a lot of potential for journalism online that can help us get back on track. Matter is one of the best ideas today. Basically, it’s this project that a great group of journalists have come up with that really is encouraging long-form, well researched, heavily investigated journalism. It’s not about one topic, and will only release one long piece of journalism a week for .99c per article, iTunes-style.
This leads to another issue: finance. We don’t want to have subscription-only sites, yet we don’t want to give out free content. So how about 10 free articles per month? 5? Take away the print edition entirely?
Barraged with ads and clogged with news stories from every section in a labyrinthine setup, news websites are constantly trying to figure out what people want to see online and why people so quick to criticize.
I think there’s a lot more to consider when it comes to finance of journalism, like this Reuters piece describes.
1. I like the idea of the iTunes-style model. I really do truly believe that people would buy a piece of journalism for $1 (I mean…it is only one dollar). We buy books that are popular, we buy albums, we buy clothes. All online. If this Matter site proves itself as much as it’s saying, there’s no reason why the bandwagon effect wouldn’t translate to long-form journalism.
2. The ambition of one story a week is perfect. It’s not too much content to handle, and it embraces the idea of anticipation. It works. (Or it should…I guess we’ll see.)
3. Embracing the online and the print, focusing on statistics and the readers. What if news organizations DID give free content online, but also kept their print edition for a subscription fee or a per-purchase fee? This print edition could even be made reader-specific by looking at the stats of what people read, what type of people read what, where they’re from, etc. This technology is possible and is used in newsrooms…so why not apply it to the product itself and to the way the news source makes money?
Say your steady readers who keep coming back really like to read about the Arab Spring. So, in your print edition, include stories about these revolutions. You’re catering to your steady devotees, but you’re also gaining profit while maintaining interest. And you also include other things that you think are important. We shouldn’t undermine our own role in the newsmaking process.
4. Paying past the first page. There’s also another way to make money that’s described in the aforementioned article. What if we re-configure how readers read the inverted pyramid style and translate to profit? Most of the information could be on the first page of an article, and subsequent information on further pages could cost 5, 10c at some point.
5. Suggested cost. Or, you could do it Radiohead style and ask readers to donate money for longer-form stories at the last page (or the first, whichever, who knows?). People bought Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” online when the band website let them enter however much they wanted to pay. (I do know people who paid little to nothing…but the important thing to think about is the people who DID pay.)
This is where the rest of journalism can play in — the bulky middle that is between 10 and 20 inches and isn’t quite long-form, isn’t quite scanner-style. It’s as if we feel guilty about making people read our stories. It’s a strange reverse psychology. We lament in how we’re unappreciated, but we can’t stick up for ourselves when the big-bad Internet reprimands us for writing too much.
Simply, we can’t treat our readers like they’re uncompromising royalty exulted by the journalism who can reach them the fastest or keeps them on the page the longest. We also can’t underestimate them and their genuine interest in reading. There’s been a growing gap between journalism and the readers, even though we’ve, at face value, created more connections like guest bloggers and sister citizen-run sites. We should think about what we’re really doing, though.
The internet has shackled journalists and readers up in chains as it dominates how people use it. We’ve become reactive to the internet instead of proactive, and with some re-assessment, I think that role can change. But for now, until we figure out how to maintain journalism’s integrity online and serve our readers to the greatest extent, we’ll join the perpetrators in the active (and often unintentional) crippling of the craft of newsmaking in the new era of journalism
Long-form is a way to connect people. Everyone loves a good story. If only we found a way to bring back that mentality, we’d be able to improve our legitimacy as journalists and the trust and interest of those we write for.
First of all, there’s one point I’ve come to about the lambasting of long-form in modern journalism:
There is a time and place for everything.
And as you can probably tell, I’m a big fan of long-form journalism. Look at any of my past posts.
Well, I’m actually a fan of long-form anything: books, seven-page magazine pieces, essays, long-winded sentences, analyses…etc. It’s actually so much an interest that it’s permeated through my own work (to the dismay of my editor…) and my speech. Being concise has become my battle du jour as I, on a daily basis, fight with unnecessary jargon and too many commas and lengthy prepositional phrases. It’s something that I think is pretty characteristic of me, but often plagues my reporting.
But, it has gotten better. And yes, I’ve considered before, why am I not doing magazine?
I answer myself with the assuaging response of the fact that I like to be challenged. I’m doing reporting because I feel like you can get a solid set of skills that you may not in magazine. (That’s not to say you don’t gain skills in magazine. Sometimes I think I’m crazy for not letting my creative juices flow just a teensy bit more across the way at Vox.) I’m very creative-minded, and I think magazine is good for people like that. But I personally need to hamper down on the wandering ways of my mind and get (relatively) hard-lined mindset of news reporting. Getting the most important information and being concise continues to be my weakness and my goal, simultaneously, and as I actively am aware of myself as a reporter, I think I can continue to develop.
But that’s not what I really want to talk about in this post. I mean, in all honesty, who wants to read about me and my personal afflictions with my unruly creative expression? No one.
As I learn to balance creativity with being succinct, I want to stress that I’m not simply trying to suppress my creativity. I’m simply learning how to manage it. But I think there’s something to say for how the changing nature of journalism has essentially begun to ruthlessly suppress journalists’ creativity.
We talk about the future of journalism — using SEO lingo, scanner-style stories, making stories as short as possible — and in this talk, I think we’ve become the victims of self-flagellation because we think that people simply aren’t going to read long articles or click on “page 2” to continue reading. I’m not saying that I don’t agree with transforming how journalism is presented. I think there’s a lot of potential for using bullets and Twitter and news aggregation. But I think that the cost of entirely gutting the structure of journalism is very detrimental to both the journalists and the readers.
Does this sentence look more appealing now?
How about now?
Or even this? More emphasis? Am I really excited about this sentence? Do you care?
I think these new styles are successful in drawing in a reader’s attention. That’s pretty much understood. But what does it really mean? It may work short-term, but what about long-term? Where will these new ideas be in five years? Is it too hopeless-romantic of me to think that a really good long piece will leave more of a lasting impact than an online-oriented piece?
And there is a difference between the two. Long-form is supposed to make an impact. Breaking news, short scanner-style — they’re not. They’re simply there for the info. Which is fine…but I think this mentality may become dangerous as it begins to pervade through all of journalism. We shouldn’t be ashamed of writing lengthy pieces, and we also shouldn’t think that people will automatically say “No.”
A lot of the people pushing for journalism “reform” (is that too stuffy of a term?) say that it’s beneficial for future generations. They’ll say that as attention spans shorten and the internet becomes more user-specific, generations to come will see long-form and (hopefully consequently) well-researched stories as cumbersome and unappealing. Thus, in comes the argument for a new perspective on journalism, for new formats that essentially devalue the power of a long article or, at least, an article that takes longer to put together. I’m not saying that these new formats like scanner or even citizen journalism are bad. My opinion is that there’s simply a time and place for everything. But when we start to re-define ALL journalism — including the longer forms and less “I-want-to-read-it-right-now” pieces — we become irrevocable victims of influence.
I think it’s naive and way too judgmental to say that my generation doesn’t have the capability to maintain the attention necessary for long-form. Yes, the internet has changed us. Yes, technology has drastically shortened our attention spans. Yes, we prefer to get quick news from Yahoo! rather than from a feature in the Times (sadly). But I don’t think our entire mentality has changed.
We read books. Take The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Harry Potter or most recently, The Hunger Games. We even read ghastly simple books like Twilight. But the level of intellect needed to read these books isn’t my point. My point is that we still read. We’ll go out and buy a book and read all 500 or so pages. Perhaps this is due to social pressure, and maybe the quality of these books aren’t great. But reading is still present in our society, and in these moments of literary fervor I can see that my generation still can really, truly enjoy long-form. And when journalists begin to debase this simple observation, I think the future for the craft of journalism is doomed. We can’t assume things when we write stories — that’s heresy. So why should we assume that long-form is dead? Because, honestly, it’s not.
I shamefully admit that I did, at one dark point in my life, read all 544 pages of this book.
(There’s also another issue with format that I’ve been debating. That’s the more creative style story. These stories break the boundaries of how an article should be written, how a lede is put together, how grafs are juxtaposed, how much you can break away from the inverted pyramid style. We talked about this in class the other day. We talked about a quite creatively reported story about a toilet bowl flushing contest and another about an errant, crazed rooster that attacked a child.
But I had a problem with these stories. You know, I talk about how I support creativity, and now you see me being hesitant about taking “creative liberties” with stories. I only hesitate during these examples because I think simply that these stories are unsuccessful for two reasons: 1, they seem to patronize the subject matter and 2, their creativity just seems out of place. They just didn’t seem newsworthy to me.
I understand the bizarre nature of events like toilet flushing contests and an AWOL rooster. But I think that when a reporter created the proverbial mountain of a molehill, I think that the journalism simply fails. Yes, it’s a good story. It’s funny, and people like it. But is it worth it?)
Roosters are kind of funny.
Again, I think there’s a time and place for everything. And I think reporters often have trouble figuring out not only what is worth covering and what isn’t, but also how creative we’re allowed to be.
I think that self-censoring of creativity is terrible, but sometimes it’s necessary. Journalists are subject to criticism, so we take it into our own hands to figure out what the people want and how we should give it to them. But in being so focused on the consumer, I think we can stray from what the point of journalism really is: to make news. Yes, citizens are important, and they should play a role in
But do we really want to have society dictate our every movement? Should we really have to change our profession just to ride through the current storm of cultural and technological upheaval and change? We shouldn’t underestimate ourselves, and we shouldn’t underestimate our readers. We are professionals, even though it’s hard to prove, without a license or framed diploma. But just because we essentially are caterers to the people and reliant on the people they want to know about, doesn’t mean we can’t have control over our own content.
Doctors are cool, but do they know the proper use of a comma? How to write an awesome lede?
SEO is important. So is bold lettering and scanner style journalism. But sometimes I think we’re getting away from the actual reporting, the actual writing. How can we remain a profession if we’re constantly willing to compromise ourselves for the next big thing? Aggregation won’t save journalism. Good reporters will.
I’m also not saying that every news article should become a 70-inch novella. I think, again, that there’s a time and place for everything. We need breaking news. We also need features. We need magazines and newspapers that people will buy and genuinely enjoy. But we don’t need to completely re-define the profession. We amend the constitution, we don’t rewrite it. We need the same perspective in journalism. But catering to the whims of culture instead of to the actual needs and potential of the people, we run the risk of de-legitimizing not only the profession and citizens, but ourselves as well.
I was sitting in Starbucks the other day (a fact that might totally debase the entire next novella I’m about to post out of a case of classic upper-middle class college kid hypocrisy), and I overheard two girls talking about their clothes. I wasn’t exactly listening to their conversation, as I was semi-focusing on the reading I had to do for a political science class the next day, until they brought up their pairs of TOMS shoes.
“I reaaaaaaally need a new pair of TOMS,” Girl 1 said. “They’re just so old.”
“Me too,” Girl 2 said. “I kind of want to get the sparkly gold ones.”
I stopped for a moment, pondered, and then got back to work. I didn’t stop because of the high pitch of these girls’ voices or because they were speaking at a volume normally preferred for a loud sports event. I stopped because I’d heard this before.
It brought me back to a few weeks ago when I saw a new box in front of the cashier at Starbucks. It had some minimalist design I can’t specifically recall right now upon which bracelets hung. On each bracelet was a little piece of metal with “INDIVISIBLE” emblazoned on it. The box had some patriotic slogan involving jobs and U.S. and red, white and blue. The goal, according to the website, is to encourage growth of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Buy the bracelet, save American jobs.
The only thing I could think (and accidentally out loud) was, “Seriously?”
There is charity. There is passion and drive. There is devotion to a cause, to a movement where you dirty your hands with a soiled shovel or sweat through the day on a site where you help build a building for a village. There is entrepreneurial spirit that seeks to genuinely bring something to the common good.
But there is also deception in our modern definition of charity.
Case in point. Gap got a huge backlash from customers when someone posted a picture online of their "Made in America" bags with "Made in China" tags.
Thanks to a friend, I read an article titled “7 worst international aid ideas”, which makes some pretty good points. One of the charity organizations criticized was TOMS shoes, and I was curious. I’d talked about this before, about how I was uncomfortable with TOMS shoes and other organizations like RED, Livestrong and the pink ribbon campaign (who doesn’t really need criticizing, because Komen’s gotten itself into a heap of trouble recently). TOMS has turned into the starlet of charities because it does what it says it does: it gives a pair of shoes to a poverty-stricken child in Africa when someone buys a pair online.
So, it’s a one-for-one deal, you may think. What’s bad about that?
But it’s much more than that. It’s a matter of diffusion of responsibility. It’s just like the crisis in Haiti: everyone jumped to help out. But, what does your text of $10 to Haiti efforts really mean? And moreover, why was coverage and attention in Haiti so short-lived?
What do we really contribute to the movement by passively buying a bracelet, a red shirt, a pair of canvas shoes? What does this really do for the greater good? And more importantly, why do we need to be rewarded for helping others out? If TOMS were a company that only sent the pair of shoes to the children—and took away the stylish pair from the lamenting Starbucks girl—would it be as successful?
These are all questions to raise as journalists and to help citizens raise.
I think I’ve just got a lot of qualms with the tendency to embrace materialism in our country’s publicity agencies. But I realize it would be unrealistic for me to say, “Hey, guys, stop that! Everyone needs to stop being consumers.” Because that’s definitely never going to happen.
I could go into a long rant about how consumerism is destroying our culture, but that would be a futile gesture. I also want to prevent the exhaustive effort of going into political philosophies (because we all know that socialism doesn’t work out well, communism doesn’t work at all, and democracy, despite what some say, does have problems)…because no one really wants that. (Sorry, political science professor. The Internet wins.)
Consumerism (and its father, or brother, capitalism) has already been wreaking havoc on our society, and has been since humans realized they could create a system of coinage and material goods. (I also recently saw a coin collection at our university’s Art and Archaeology museum and was blown away at the complexity of the commerce systems from political systems of old.) Everyone knows the deficiencies and inadequacies of our consumerist culture.
But it’s the intertwining of consumerism and charity that is concerning. Companies realize that people REALLY like to be humanitarians, and, armed with minimalist designs and idealistic slogans and YouTube videos, they’ve captured our spirit of altruism.
And we completely fall for it. Pay $30 for a shirt with a red logo and help save Africa? Seems easy enough. But we fail the potential of the movement by just clicking “buy” and then going about our business.
And then when people find out about the realities of charity companies—the high administrative costs of their services, the “celebrity” complex as shown in the Haiti fervor, the impracticality of calling for the end of something so weighty as starvation or inequality—they get upset. This is understandable. When a movement is undermined by consumerism itself, it leaves a bruise. I’m not here to critique anyone, I just want to raise questions.
International conflict and human rights are a go-to issue for journalists. We’re attracted to negative coverage; starvation and culture clash are perfect candidates. I’m personally looking into pursuing foreign conflict journalism myself, but I think it’s important for us to avoid ignorance. Yes, starvation is bad, and totalitarian regimes are bad. I think that can be generally agreed upon. But the conflicts we involve ourselves in have many asterisks and details that we, and subsequently, the people, don’t know.
I’m not sure what my goal was with this post, but I did want to address the hypocrisies that are occurring in our society. Perhaps it is a lack of information. Perhaps it is an ignorance in the fault of the people. Perhaps it is denial, or self-gratification as a motive. I don’t think any one blog post could address the psychological nature of why we feel the need to be charitable and why charity capitalism has spiralled out of control.
But the fact is that instead of buying that new pair of TOMS shoes, we should research the source of inequality and conflict in African countries. After reading through that Times article about pre-arranged Muslim marriages, look up different translations of what the Quran says about marriage.
That’s obviously a lot to ask of people. Which is why, as journalists, we should strive to give all of the information out that we can find. We’re human too, and because of this, we can fall into the trap of assumption and shallow reporting. I personally don’t think I do enough research myself, and that’s something I need to change.
It’s just like what I say about veganism. I think veganism is a great cause, and I applaud those who brave the waters of such a devoted lifestyle. But unless a vegan is personally going about changing the face of the meat industry (which I’m sure is happening, and to those people, I salute you), they can’t assume that their preference of spelt over Challah bread is making much impact on the decisions at the Cargill, Tyson or Smithfield headquarters.
As Joseph Conrad put it, there is a heart of darkness inside all of us, and the cruelties condemned by charities could be described as one of the world’s hearts of darkness. The problem now is we choose to cover up that heart with a thin veil of positivity and idealism through our products and consumer-charities. It’s hard to deny the fact that sending money via text to Haiti or buying a Livestrong bracelet briefly alleviates the guilt of being a consumer (as Zizek describes in the video). But maybe it’s our goal, as journalists (and citizens), to start raising some questions about those little actions.
Charity is not a bad thing, and neither are the foundations that represent them. Rather, charity is a fantastic facet of our culture’s complex psyche. It’s wonderful to see how people will jump so quickly on helping out once crisis occurs (although there is also a critique of the tendency of the U.S. to not take action until crisis occurs). But our passive approach to bringing about change will, in turn, bring nothing but a prolonged status quo. Our culture of fast food and faster information has undermined our ability to stop and really realize significance—significance of anything. Pressing the “checkout” button is easier and has become preferred over more active decisions.
We as journalists need to inform. We need to research so that we don’t make sweeping assumptions or generalizations. We need to keep foundations like Susan G. Komen and TOMS accountable for their actions. We need to look into the background and history of international conflicts through the eyes of journalists, not necessarily just as humanitarians. We need to be honest and realistic in our reporting, so people can do the same about their own perceptions. It is our role to be the middle man between the people, these groups and activist movements, and the damaged countries under the spotlight. We ask the questions no one else asks, so that maybe, in the future, the people can too.
As journalists, as people and as a world community, we need to be active instead of passive. We can’t expect the world to change if we don’t take a role in the change itself.
So, I thought I knew all there was to know about social networking. But alas, I do not! Here’s a link to a website that was created to explain Twitter, one of the big, bad wolves of the social-network-verse (play on “universe”. I’m bad at this.) I’m definitely an advocate for the use of social networking in journalism, because without it, our profession would fall behind. That’s just not a question. As we learned in class the other day, a Pew report stated that 13 percent of adults use Twitter now. Because of this increasing use of social networking, I think that embracing the technology is more than necessary to push journalism into the future.
But, the role of the journalist, as we talked about it class, is more muddled when it comes to Twitter and other social media networks. I would like to stand on the side of an all-encompassing profile for a journalist to maintain transparency. “Perceived similarity” is good for journalists: who we are in the newsroom should, essentially, be who we are online. What I mean by this is that I don’t think journalists should have separate accounts or censor certain things from other people. I understand that we are people, too. We have individual rights and the ability to write about whatever inane thing we’d like to, but let’s be real. When we choose to be journalists, we choose to put ourselves into the spotlight of equal parts public criticism, public respect. We have a devotion to the people. While we’re not necessarily public officials, we do represent the people, and moreover, the information that these people might not be able to access otherwise. We get mad when a celebrity tweets something racist or homophobic, or when an athlete cheats on his wife, so why can’t people get mad when journalists portray a jeopardizing opinion?
I’m not saying journalists can’t have opinions. Saying that is a futile gesture, because humanity is riddled with opinions. Our biases, our experiences, our passions, our disdain—it all factors into what we do in life. And in a journalist’s life, our work just happens to reveal the clashing armies of accuracy and of personal interpretation. If it’s already hard for us to distinguish to our readers how we manage to maintain objectivity in our reporting, then why make it harder on ourselves and ruin our image online? I think it’s a matter of laziness. Do you really need to post that snide comment about Rick Santorum’s latest innuendo misstep on Twitter? I will admit, I have failed and let loose some personal opinions online that I have immediately regretted. But I try as hard as I can to avoid doing so. It’s hard to constantly censor yourself, and sometimes I feel like it’s not worth it. But it’s the moral effort of doing so that I think makes maintaining your professionalism online worth it. If you don’t want your mom to see it online, why would you want your readers to?
In any sense, I believe Twitter and social media is a fantastic tool for journalists. But I do have some qualms with it.
It seems to me like journalists have a bad bandwagon complex, jumping on the newest technology like it’s the callback you’ve been waiting for three hours (exhibit A: Google+). I hope that journalism embraces Twitter, but it’s the gimmick-y nature of social media that makes me shift around a little bit on my opinion. It’s great to use online resources, but there’s also a line. And I’m not exactly sure where that line is. I guess what I’m really addressing is the breaking news mentality of Twitter. It’s already hard enough for journalists to get content out fast enough that is still accurate, but when Twitter comes into the picture, that focus on accuracy seems to shift to the back burner. I think Twitter is wonderful, but it’s also dangerous. We need to embrace the changing face of journalism, but we also need to stay rooted in the tradition of the profession. Maybe long-form may be going by the wayside eventually, but I don’t think we should totally compromise our format of presenting news to the public just to keep up with the trend.
We’re a trend-following profession, but that doesn’t mean we have to be conformist.
Moreover, there’s the issue of citizen journalism. As journalists, bloggers and citizens intertwine online more than they ever have before, the definition of journalism is changing. What is a journalist now? We’ve talked about this in class, in the newsroom, and I’m sure it’s a dead-horse topic that no one can really make an answer to. We’ve got to be careful how we transform ourselves. Again, it’s great to embrace everything that’s happening in these new technologies, but as we begin to change, we need to keep our eyes open to not only the benefit of such technologies, but also the shortfalls. I think a critical furrow of the brow, which journalists are so good at conducting, is appropriate in the topic of social media and journalism.
abigail geiger 