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November 30, 2005
Yes, it's flawed...
Check this out on PublicEye:
Does that mean the old model for success and competence in journalism--go to a small newspaper, learn the basics, and start climbing up the food chain, hopefully encountering a few crusty, knowledgeable editors along the way--is in some sense flawed? After all, the values of the small town media outlet, which sees itself as part of the community it serves, don't much square with the impulses of the ambitious green reporter who wants more than anything to afflict the comfortable.
Flawed? You bet!
Also flawed is the stereotypical attitude assigned to new reporters: the desire to afflict the comfortable. Stereotypes often have antecedents based squarely in reality. We who entered this profession following Watergate understand this blatantly political attitude all too well.
But it seems to me the attitude is no longer political (and that's not to say it is without political effects and/or consequences). Today's student seems to me to be far more economically oriented. Any desire to "afflict the comfortable" seems to me to be driven by the desire to get a top job in journalism--a position of money and power for the very good or the very lucky.
A fact remains: Most journalism is practiced at local media. And if the local journalists' heads are not in the local game, then local citizens are the big losers (And the news organizations too! Dreamy-eyed, disengaged journalists are costing publishers money by producing a disengaged product.). That sad situation flouts the ethics of journalism.
We who teach journalism ought to fight the arrogance before it takes root. It begins taking root in our classes when we engage in hero worship--holding up the famous as models of journalistic practice when they represent, in fact, a minority in the practice.
Posted by acline at November 30, 2005 11:57 AM | | Spotlight