Due to a trip this weekend and general life craziness, I probably will not be posting anything new here this week or next week. Check back the first week of July for my next post.
In the meantime, if you would like to be interviewed or if you would like to see me write an article about a particular subject, please feel free to leave it in a comment here or email me.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Why I hate the nightly news
As a prospective journalist, is it bad that I don’t even have my television plugged in 99 percent of the time?
I’ve often wondered if I’m kind of a throwback because I’m not interested in watching TV, being on TV, writing for TV, or even producing broadcast-like content for websites. When I first considered journalism as a career, many of the media professionals I met seemed to confirm this impression. They seemed to believe that mixed-media journalists who could produce their own clips are the wave of the future, and print-only writers are on the fast track to extinction.
One reporter in particular passionately exhorted me to enroll in the Interactive Journalism program at American University. There, she told me, I would learn to report while armed with a digital video camera, a recorder, and a laptop at all times. A mobile journalist, or “mojo,” herself, she believed that the ability to stick a microphone in anyone’s face and aggressively go after the sound bite on camera would be a big factor in determining any young journalist's future success.
While I agree that a good quote or a good clip can make a story, this approach to interviewing -- for a sound bite -- turns me off.
First, I view interviews as a part of finding out a story, and I don't ever approach one thinking I know everything someone is going to say. If I try to get only the words I want to hear out of someone's mouth, I'm not really interviewing them; I'm interviewing my projection of them. While this may not have been exactly what the reporter I spoke with meant, it frightens me that the news other young journalists are being told to find is only the news that they expect to be there.
Second, the neater the news is, the more manufactured it seems to me, just as the more the person who’s telling me the news looks like a mannequin (male or female), the less likely I am to believe them. And if I don’t believe the news on TV, why would I expect someone else to swallow it just because I started writing it?
The more I've thought about it, the more this difference in viewpoints has become symbolic to me of why my television sits dark and silent in my living room.
But maybe there’s hope for people like me. According to this article, I’m far from alone in despising broadcast news.
If I’m not the only one who’d rather not touch the nightly news with a ten foot pole, it stands to reason that there are other people out there doing more interesting things with video journalism. It’s even possible that viewers fed up with the ratings-based coverage choices would be interested in watching them. Which could mean that, given the current status of the media world at large, maybe we’ll see some evolution soon.
Bottom line: the journalists I cited at the beginning of this post do have a point. Even if I'm no more interested in being the next Colbert than I am in being the next Couric, even if my approach to interviewing is not totally sound bite-centric, and even if my television stays unplugged, it would still be a good idea for me to learn how to use a camera. If I want to participate in whatever the media world is changing into, I should learn how to use the tools of the trade. After all, my problem is not really with those tools; it's with what news stations are currently doing with them. It's even possible that, by the time I'm ready, the media world might want the types of clips I'd be proud to create.
So... home video projects, anyone?
I’ve often wondered if I’m kind of a throwback because I’m not interested in watching TV, being on TV, writing for TV, or even producing broadcast-like content for websites. When I first considered journalism as a career, many of the media professionals I met seemed to confirm this impression. They seemed to believe that mixed-media journalists who could produce their own clips are the wave of the future, and print-only writers are on the fast track to extinction.
One reporter in particular passionately exhorted me to enroll in the Interactive Journalism program at American University. There, she told me, I would learn to report while armed with a digital video camera, a recorder, and a laptop at all times. A mobile journalist, or “mojo,” herself, she believed that the ability to stick a microphone in anyone’s face and aggressively go after the sound bite on camera would be a big factor in determining any young journalist's future success.
While I agree that a good quote or a good clip can make a story, this approach to interviewing -- for a sound bite -- turns me off.
First, I view interviews as a part of finding out a story, and I don't ever approach one thinking I know everything someone is going to say. If I try to get only the words I want to hear out of someone's mouth, I'm not really interviewing them; I'm interviewing my projection of them. While this may not have been exactly what the reporter I spoke with meant, it frightens me that the news other young journalists are being told to find is only the news that they expect to be there.
Second, the neater the news is, the more manufactured it seems to me, just as the more the person who’s telling me the news looks like a mannequin (male or female), the less likely I am to believe them. And if I don’t believe the news on TV, why would I expect someone else to swallow it just because I started writing it?
The more I've thought about it, the more this difference in viewpoints has become symbolic to me of why my television sits dark and silent in my living room.
But maybe there’s hope for people like me. According to this article, I’m far from alone in despising broadcast news.
If I’m not the only one who’d rather not touch the nightly news with a ten foot pole, it stands to reason that there are other people out there doing more interesting things with video journalism. It’s even possible that viewers fed up with the ratings-based coverage choices would be interested in watching them. Which could mean that, given the current status of the media world at large, maybe we’ll see some evolution soon.
Bottom line: the journalists I cited at the beginning of this post do have a point. Even if I'm no more interested in being the next Colbert than I am in being the next Couric, even if my approach to interviewing is not totally sound bite-centric, and even if my television stays unplugged, it would still be a good idea for me to learn how to use a camera. If I want to participate in whatever the media world is changing into, I should learn how to use the tools of the trade. After all, my problem is not really with those tools; it's with what news stations are currently doing with them. It's even possible that, by the time I'm ready, the media world might want the types of clips I'd be proud to create.
So... home video projects, anyone?
Monday, June 2, 2008
Welcome to my new home
Summer, 2004: The escalator descending into Dupont Circle station was turned off tonight, silent in the muggy wash of laughter, cabs honking, and shouted conversation flowing out from the bars and the traffic circle. As I picked my way down several flights' worth of steps, I passed a twenty-something man standing very determinedly upright. He had planted himself firmly on one step, head nodding but spine straight, as if by standing just so he knew that somehow, in spite of his drunkenness, he would make it to wherever he was going. When I hopped off the bottom step and turned to scan the steady stream of people behind me, I could just barely see him still standing near the top. An hour later, finally at home, I wonder if he's made it to the bottom of the escalator yet.
***
This is one of my earliest memories of D.C. at night, just after I moved here from Pennsylvania. I'm happy to call this city my home now. The people here, the city itself, and how they contrast with the other places I've been have inspired much of the stuff I write.
Now that I'm starting to submit and publish those writings, I keep getting two questions that usually result in me looking down, shuffling my feet, making some kind of weird face and saying, "Um..." Those questions are:
1. So what do you write about?
2. Do you have a blog (or a website)?
The answer to the first question hasn't really changed. However, the answer to the second one is, finally: YES! Now I do. And now I get to order a whole new set of business cards.
The current plan is to update once a week or so with new articles, things I've posted on other blogs, and/or random writings like the sketch above. It would be more often if I didn't have pesky things like that full-time job that pays for my rent and writing habit, or classes so I can actually learn how to write articles... but hey, can't have everything, right?
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