Printed Matters

Our Beat Reporting class at Centennial College had a visit today from Toronto Sun reporter Thane Burnett, a 25-year veteran of journalism. He gave us a 10-point list of things to remember when you’re out in the field. Some of them have to do with reporting in foreign countries, though he pointed out that he wasn’t a foreign correspondent.

Here’s his list. It was an interesting talk:

1. Get used to the taste of Diet Coke.

As soon as your plane lands you start coming up with story ideas. You don’t have time to get sick. Be careful what you drink. And eat. Oh, and make sure your shots are up-to-date.

2. Bring photocopies of your passport and letters of introduction from your media sources.

You never know when you’ll need them. Oh, and photocopies of extra headshots of yourself.

3. Buy a photographer’s vest

Even if you’re not a photographer. They’re handy for carrying all the stuff you’ll need in the field. Also helps identify you as a journalist (except in those places where people might think it’s a bullet-proof vest – then, it might send the wrong message.)

4. Head for a university

In a foreign city, a university is a great place to find people who know English and who know stuff.

5. Get off the beaten path

Don’t just report on what everybody else is reporting on. Get out and find something different. Bring home a story. And take whatever help you can get. He said:

Sometimes it feels like you take and you take and you take and you feel like you’re never giving back. But what you’re giving back is a great story.

He told the story of getting off the beaten track in Louisiana after Hurricane Rita (the one that hit right after Katrina), discovering the legend of Biddy Baby.

6. Do not EVER believe the Canadian Consulate is going to help you.

7. Get into people’s homes.

See how they live. Get into their lives as much as you can. And never rely on or do interviews by email.

8. Expect one of two things: living in the lap of luxury or living on the side of the road wrapped in plastic.

9. Be respectful of the people you’re writing about.

Be respectful of their stories.

10. Have fun. It’s the best job in the world.

There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the information by which to detect lies.
- Walter Lippman

Regular readers of this blog will need no reminder that journalism is important, and that the world needs journalists. After all, this blog, and others like it, is dedicated to the proposition that journalism needs saving. So we wring our hands, we huff and puff, and occasionally we offer what we think are sensible solutions to incremental problems. Because we care. And if you’re reading this, you probably care too.

The title of this post is the first premise in a big argument – an argument in the philosophical sense, which proceeds from certain premises and arrives forthwith at inevitable conclusions. This argument, I hope, will arrive at a conclusion with which all persons interested in journalism cannot help but agree. The question it answers – why does the world need better news aggregators? – is not an incremental question, but one of fundamental importance.

Each premise of the argument will be the title of a post in a series of ten posts. And each post will seek to elucidate and bolster the premise contained in its title. So let’s begin.

The quote above by Walter Lippman is as succinct as any statement about the importance of journalism. Journalism exists, and is important, because it brings to citizens the information and context needed to be free, to make rational choices, to hold government and authority accountable, to unmask corruption, to flush out wrongdoing. Journalism exists to tell us things that some people don’t want us to know.

And there’s more than just liberty, justice and peace at stake. Otherwise, we couldn’t explain the value of sports and celebrity news, for example. News also fulfills a social role for us. It satisfies our Awareness Instinct, as Kovach and Rosenstiel put it.

Some might say that the role of journalism has been lessened in this age of ubiquitous, free-flowing information. Citizens and professional journalists alike post their news on the Internet for free – free to any citizen who wants to read it, free for aggregators and search engines to collect and redistribute; free for any citizen to appropriate for comment, amplification, or correction.

In a world where anyone can post, use and re-use the news, what is the role of the professional?

Professional journalists are more important than ever in a world of oversupply. We need credible people, people we can trust, to sort the wheat from the chaff, to make sense of the barrage, to order things. Because in abundance of information, there is a shortage of attention. To what should we pay attention? We need people who can sort that out, retell the story in an engaging way, and most of all, people we can trust to do it consistently and correctly.

Or as the now-famous cyber-journalist Adrian Holovaty put in a recent Chicago Tribune article, “We’re creating an ordered view of chaos. That’s what journalists do, right?”

The role of professional journalists and editors is more important than ever. Note that I am NOT saying that these professionals must be employed at big news orgs. There’s a good discussion of this over at Eat Sleep Publish.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series, and the next premise in the argument, titled “Journalism is hard and needs to be funded.”