I think that the key to success in modern journalism is passionate reporting. With the profusion of news and news sources, it is far too easy to tune out the news and ignore it completely simply because it is so prevalent. I think dry reporting makes the news easier to ignore because it is often hard for the news consumer to get a clear sense of why he should care.
I think that what people really want from news reporting is not just a collection of information, but context, relationships, and the idea that the person reporting the news wants to find solutions as much as the people reading. Of course, not all news is bad news or something that needs to be fixed, but most news is, and reporting that points not just to the problems but the solutions accomplishes the very things that the current sterile reporting claims to want to but cannot.
Right now, this kind of passionate reporting seems to be limited to the realm of non-traditional journalists and the opinion pages. Certainly, I am not suggesting that news reporting should be set aside for rampant speculation and opinion; rather, I am suggesting that news reporting is about reporting all of the news, not just the surface of it.
Journalists are in a unique position within society not just to report what has happened but to report what can be done. In the modern media age, the "what can be done" message is often drown out by the competitive shouting of advertisers, advocates, partisans and politicians all trying to portray their own interests as paramount. Combine this cacophony with sterile reporting that gives information often without context, and it is no wonder that so many people shrug the whole mess off.
What makes reporting passionate? When the journalist shows that he knows the story; not just the facts, but the whole story. Passionate reporting says what happened, how it affects all of us, and what can happen next. Passionate reporting presents the reader with reasons why he should care about this story and want to do something about it.
A story can be passionate and still be fair. As the Largemouth Citizen Journalism Workshop definition of Citizen Journalism states, journalism can be passionate and still be journalism.
Trained journalists usually follow an ethical code of “objectivity,” which means that besides striving to be factual and fair, they also try to remain personally neutral towards the subjects they write about. Citizen journalists, while they also strive to be factual and fair, are not usually neutral on the subjects they write about, and they don’t try to be. They 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) 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.
If traditional journalism wants to survive in the modern media marketplace, then it has to do what it takes to get attention, not just to sell more media, but because the journalist’s responsibility is to inform, and no one can be informed if no one is paying attention.
2 comments:
I think you touch on many important issues in this post. While I agree that journalist should dig deep into a story and find possible solutions to problems, I do not think this is the primary goal of the writer.
The reader acts as a voyeur in many cases. He is peeping through a window, so to speak. Good writing should spark a reader to want to act. The majority of news junkies are not pro-active by their nature. In many cases, giving them a concrete way to solve a problem will not spur them to action.
A journalist should strive to inspire people to fix problems, but I think the much more important role of a journalist is to hold those responsible more accountable.
As a writer, my job is not to fix the problem, but to expose those who should be fixing the problem. I think we are talking about roughly the same thing, but I think the power of the press lies not in helping solve problems, but exposing the problem itself.
I agree with you both, Dennis and Marvin. It is for me at times upsetting to hear news being reported by someone in a way that makes them seem totally disconnected from the issue or me as the person reading the article or watching the news cast. On the other hand I have been exposed to opinions and viewpoints on issues that I would have preferred the journalist to remain neutral. And am upset when I hear about or read about an issue on a totally superficial level when more information could have been presented and was only left out in order to portray the story the way they wanted it to be seen.
Post a Comment