Transformations

I’ve wanted to write since I wrote my first formal story when I was in seventh grade. That experience left an impression on me that never faded, and even though life took me elsewhere from that original experience, the idea was always there.

In 2005, after four years as a network architect and at the tail end of a (at the time) fifteen year Information Technology career, I decided that I could not ignore my idea of becoming a writer any longer. I committed myself to a radical transformation from a network integration specialist into a published writer.

In some ways, modern journalism faces a similar choice. Throughout the history of news gathering and reporting, the profession that would become journalism has evolved and transformed as technology and the demands of the societies journalists have served have changed. Certainly, some ideals make news reporting better today than it may have been in the past, but the fact that those ideals have not always been ideal proves that change has occurred.

According to the Society of Professional Journalists, the goal of a modern journalist is to accomplish the following four things:

- Seek the truth and report it

- Minimize harm

- Act independently

- Be accountable

In themselves, these are laudable goals for journalists to strive toward; however, I think that the interpretation the SPJ puts on how these goals are achieved represent why journalism is struggling as a profession in the modern marketplace.

To me, the problem rests with one basic idea: why should the consumer care? In our modern world of 24/365 news from literally hundreds of potential sources, why should the news consumer care about the reporting of a particular source? If all sources are reporting neutral, factual news, then why care who reports it?

What makes news stand out and what draws readers to certain news sources, in my opinion, is the very lack of neutrality journalists claim they are striving toward. People watch and read Fox News or Slate because they can perceive the bias and so they seek out biases that they agree with.

Some journalists stand aghast at my previous statement because they fundamentally do not believe that people should put their bias into news. I think this rejection of bias extends not just to those reporting the news, but also to those who are consuming it. If that is the case, then what is the point of news at all?

The point, as I see things, is for the journalist to help create a conversation in the public marketplace of ideas. In order to do that, the journalist has to compete with all of the other 24/365 sources to get the story out. The way to compete is to tell the story with passion and from a point of view that makes people pay attention to what is being said.

This is why I think citizen journalism, of all the experiments in journalism going on right now, has the best chance of succeeding and transforming the profession into something relevant to the 21^st century. Citizen journalists, through fair, factual, passionate reporting from a particular viewpoint have the chance to create the conversation in a way neutered journalism cannot.

Further, citizen journalists--or whatever they become--create that conversation without violating the spirit of anything the SPJ thinks journalists should be doing. Citizen journalists can seek the truth, minimize harm, be independent, and be accountable while also being passionate and, yes, biased about their reporting. Citizen journalists can report the truth without being neutral and without compromising the truth.

So can all journalists.

As the internet and media technologies yet to be realized change the way people gain access to the news, the choice of what kind of news people are looking for will make the movement of the marketplace more and more clear. People want to know more than what happened. They want to know why and they want to know what they can do. Journalists can answer those last two questions if they want to, but they have to change in order to do so.

I’m transforming myself, I hope for the better. Journalism can transform too, and it will be for the better of the profession and everyone who relies on it.

So why not journalism?

My fundamental disconnect with traditional journalism has always been in the application of objectivity and neutrality. Frankly, I think traditional journalism has set a standard in its interpretation of objectivity and neutrality that is dangerously high and creates a significant risk of failure for journalists and publications alike.

I respect that traditional journalists seek to apply standards of objectivity and neutrality to their investigating and writing, but I believe their attempt denies human nature, both for the writer and for the reader. I think that someone can investigate and report from their perspective (bias) and remain objective so long as they state their bias upfront. I think that passionate, in-depth reporting by journalists who obviously care about their subjects is exactly the kind of journalism modern readers want to see.

In my class last week, our instructor presented a definition of journalism (citizen journalism in this case) that I think cuts to the heart of what I think journalism should be:

“[Citizen Journalists] believe instead that the best journalism: A) is a form of popular writing grounded without compromise in verified fact; B) presents news and public issues with an articulated point of view; b) [sic] achieves fairness to the facts, to sources, and to readers by fully explaining that point of view while also offering views, ideas, and perspectives other than its own.”

--The Largemouth Citizen Journalism Manual, Douglas McGill

Unfortunately, I do not think there are many traditional journalistic publications that can accept or put into practice this kind of journalism. Further, I am unwilling to invest myself, at least at this point, into the kind of effort it would take to create the kind of publications where the cited journalistic standard would be the rule. Hence the reason that the closest I will likely every come to professional journalism is as an investigative writer or a contributor to an established citizen journalism publication.

But who knows for sure. It is hard to predict what the future holds, and opportunities may still present themselves. I am not writing journalism off completely, but I am only willing to do it on my terms.

So you’re a journalist?

I have no intention of working as a journalist after graduating from Sinclair Community College, yet here I am in my third quarter of journalism classes, and I also work as a news editor for the college paper. Does the writer protest too much?

To the contrary, I entered into my study of journalism knowing all along that I never intended to pursue that profession. I came into journalism classes on the advice of a friend who once worked as a journalist and who rightly recommended journalistic writing as a way to build more general writing skills. He was right, and I am grateful for his advice.

Secondarily, I entered into my study of journalism because many of my writing interests closely parallel journalism. Best described, my non-fiction writing interests are investigative and perhaps the only difference between the writing I want to do and journalism is my continued skepticism over the idea of journalistic objectivity.

Nevertheless, the things I am learning studying journalism are proving invaluable to me as a writer. The succinct nature of journalistic writing is helping to strip the unnecessary words from my writing in general. The investigative nature of journalism is helping me learn how to gather, validate and write about facts.

I believe that my journalistic experience will inevitably result in my being a more developed, more mature writer when I am finished. Perhaps, somewhere in the process, I will be able to distill out some essence of journalism and make it mine, but the results of that process I cannot yet see.

Blogging blogging

Weblogs have become, in my opinion, the most effective way to communicate news in a rapid manner. Of course, dedicated news websites and publications have their place, but I gather more of my news about current events topics that I follow from weblogs than from any other source.

More telling, many of these weblogs are not “traditional” news sources, but sources written by independent journalists or bloggers who function outside the traditional channels. An example of such a weblog that bridges the worlds of traditional and non-traditional journalism is Jules Crittenden’s Forward Movement weblog. Crittenden is an editor and columnist for the Boston Herald, but on his own weblog he acts as an aggregator and commentator on news items he finds important. I read his weblog daily.

On any given day, Crittenden’s weblog may cover a dozen different subjects ranging from the contentious to the hilarious, from politics to religion. It is difficult to nail down exactly what his weblog is about simply because it is about whatever he wants it to be.

Crittenden’s personal weblog contrasts in some respects to the weblogs written for traditional news sources mostly in its more open format (read lack of external editorial controls) and its more freeform approach to its subject matter. Most weblogs from traditional sources tend to be more focused on the writer’s assigned beat and more controlled in what is written.

One example of such a blog is “The God Vote” weblog of Jacques Berlinerblau for the Washington Post and Newsweek that focuses on the impact of religion and religious rhetoric on the 2008 political campaign. In his most recent post, he discusses how the focus on a candidate’s religion is representative of the ongoing blurring of the line between public and private life. This sharp focus contrasts greatly with Crittenden’s weblog, but at the same time makes Berlinerblau’s posts more thorough and poignant.

Another example of a traditional source blog is the “Baghdad Bureau” weblog of the New York Times. This weblog is written by the staff of the Times’s Baghdad Bureau and functions far more like Crittenden’s weblog but with more criticism. The latest post on that blog is a recounting of Times photographer Johan Spanner’s memories of the Abu Ghraib prison both before and after the fall of Baghdad in 2003. His recounting also conjures images, intentionally or not, of events there a year later.

Each of these weblogs have their good and bad point due as much to the writers as the formats. What they all prove, however, is the undeniable power of the weblog to convey news in ways that traditional sources cannot, which I believe will become more the way people get their news in the future.

Welcome to my Journalism 203 weblog

My name is Dennis L Hitzeman and this is my weblog for my Online Journalism class at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio. I am also a news editor for the Clarion, Sinclair’s print paper, and am leading the project to launch Sinclair’s online edition.

I am a creative writing student who is taking journalism courses both for the additional writing experience and because of the desire to gain experience writing in a journalistic fashion. Ironically, I have no intention of working as a professional journalist, rather I believe that journalistic writing is a powerful tool in the toolbox of a professional writer.

This weblog represents my online assignments for my journalism class and operates in conjunction with my broader journalism weblog “Journalistic Pursuits”, also hosted on Blogger.

My other online writing projects include my personal website dennis.hitzeman.com, my Worldview Weblog, my Journalistic Pursuits weblog, and writing as a contributor on A Host of Contributing Factors. I also contribute to Yellow Room Arts as a writer and an artist.