Assessing Journalism

ASSESSING JOURNALISM

Maintaining a blog is demanding. The discipline of writing every day (and, hopefully, while thinking at the same time) is a task I haven't had to fulfill for several years. Not that I don't have ideas--the environment is much too filled with them. It's a question of assessing them and trying to decide what makes them worthy of massaging and, most important, what will attract the interest of readers. That is, what might be "important" or "interesting" to me may be so far out of the loop that I end up writing for one person--myself! That's just about as narcissistic an activity as I can imagine.

The New World of Journalism! In search of an anchor, since my last post on 9/25/05 I've been surfing the Blogosphere several hours a day--to read what others are writing, in search of clues I might profit by in my struggle to give my writing (and thinking) a little bit more oomph. As anyone who surfs the Internet discovers, entering the Blogosphere is like logging onto infinity--one moment you're reading the musings of someone in Phnom Penh, the next in Bolivia, the next in Semipalitinsk . . . places I've never heard of--and I'm pretty well traveled. It's fascinating to find out that people are, as the cliche goes, pretty much the same anywhere. As charming as that is, the fact is, the horrible realization begins to make itself distressingly palpable: The clear majority of bloggers I've read so far are living a life of "quiet desperation" as some philosopher (was it Jean Paul Sartre?) observed. Thus the Internet becomes for them their psychologist, their priest, their counselor, their friend--or at least so they hope! It seems to be a cold, dark infinity out there (or did I miss the sector that's emitting positive, creative light?)

Except for an occasional little jewel that came squirting out of the ether, I wasn't particularly fired up with fresh insight or inspiration after several hours of searching. So I've decided to turn back to examine the fundamentals of writing. Let's start with: What is the purpose of any form of writing? It's to teach, to amuse, or to inform. I've dabbled in all these forms, but I've decided that, in order to contribute something meaningful to "life," journalism--the old-fashioned kind-- is my choice and should be the choice of anyone who wants to make a difference with words.

What's "old-fashioned" journalism? There's lots of room in the New Age Blogger World for old-fashioned journalism. This brand of writing assumes the practicing journalist is first an honest person, dedicated to plying the profession with belief in the "noble purpose" that used to be observed before the Watergate era of journalism drastically altered the "noble" part of "purpose." After Woodward and Bernstein, the purpose shifted to "gotcha" scoops,with emphasis on political leaders. And yellow journalism took on a very deep tone, wherein peer recognition became so important that practitioners resorted to inventing stories. The epitome of blatant immorality was achieved by New York Time's Jason Blair. The sickness wasn't restricted to the younger generation: CBS's Dan Rather's inflated ego led him to believe he had become an infallible national news "institution," entitling him to bear false witness in front of his viewers.

My kind of journalist must be detached long enough to be able see through the "noise" (i.e., the trees in the proverbial forest) that obscures the "truth" we're seeking. Then he or she must capture that "moment of truth" with just the right number of words, chosen for their economy, yet capable of maximizing the "illumination" of the forest. Even the lowly cub reporter, assigned to a period of professional purgatory to the local police blotter should strive to invoke this spirit by examining its apparent lifelessness with the goal of "reading" the unfortunates who appear on it, as well as the system that put them there.

Should we demand that journalists have advanced degrees? "Cerebral" writers are almost universally terrible writers because they have never been encouraged to learn the wonders of the economy of thought or wordcraft. In fact, just the opposite! While traveling the road to their academic credentials, they're actually encouraged to bloviate. They learn early on to hide the fact that they don't really understand their subject, or they have little or nothing to add to the subject. What they learn to do is "repackage" the knowledge that a few great thinkers have already recorded. In order to do this successfully and appear to be honest students, they must "attribute" their plagiarism effusively (with footnotes, etc.) while rearranging, repackaging, or rephrasing original knowledge. That's why their articles in "peer journals" and their books that university presses publish are usually always huge tomes that evidently are valued by weight, as opposed to content. The material usually appears to be so eclectic because of purposeful (albeit often unconscious) obfuscation, it ends up on "required reading lists" of their hapless undergraduate students. PhD candidates are required to pass through a gauntlet of the extraordinary demand to "pad" their theses with words--a process that can take years before receiving approval and awarding of the sheepskin. Then, after finally ascending to professorial positions within universities, the new PhDs soon encounter the dreaded "publish or perish" dictum that must be fulfilled if they are to secure their career safety net of "tenure." Intellectual padding never ends in the life of an academic. Students mostly learn in spite of this form of writing, beginning with their very first essays. It's the rare academic who can meet the honesty and truth standards of journalism. I say, let them continue to write for obscure, scholarly journals--not for mainstream journalism where truth is the object.

I'm modstly qualified to reveal this little secret about academe, having been "inside" it as student. While enroute on that road to intellectual serfdom, I managed to snag two advanced degrees, but when the time came to commit my time and energy to bid for that vaunted ultimate sheepskin, I simply wasn't able to muster the conviction that I would be able to--as they say in the PhD business--"contribute to original knowledge." That's the caveat by which PhD candidates are urged to believe that whatever their thoughts or their word-processors henceforth might produce will be so profound or significant enough to justify using the pretentious and slightly misleading title "Doctor" in front of their names.

O.K., so why require journalists to have a college degree at all? There happens to be a solid case for this proposition. It might surprise some people that journalists don't need degrees, certificates, or any specialized training, for that matter. In fact, there are excellent reasons why non-journalists may well make better practitioners than the ones who have come to believe in their self-importance by virtue of academic degrees awarded by journalism schools. Among the many examples I could cite, my favorite is Mark Steyn, a regular contributer to National Review, who writes brilliantly in any genre he chooses; by his own admission, he has little more than middle school education. Boasting a bit more formal education, there's Andrew Ferguson, who has cut a wide swath in "mainstream" journalism as well as the Blogosphere (although he seems to shift his Weltanschauung a bit too often for my comfort). In fact, my "alma mater," National Journalism Center, capitalized on the assumption that better journalists could be moulded if they participated in six-month long, intensive, hands-on internships without being previously brainwashed by formal university-issued journalism degrees . The success and presence of hundreds of NJC's graduates at all levels of the media over the past 30 years bear concrete witness to this proposition.

So to aspiring "old-fashioned" journalists, take heart! As a motivated thinker dedicated to searching for "truth," you will begin as a liberated functionary in the world of communications. Your task is essentially two-fold: (1) Discover the "forest" with the power of your native-given mind, and, (2) Describe it in such a way that a photograph reveals itself quickly and easily in the minds of your readers. (A note on my earlier comment about "detachment": You needn't be an emotionless, insensitive zombie in the course of searching for "truth," but you never to allow your emotional "content" to color, distort, or spin the truth or--as taught in journalism classes--you must never become "part" of the story). After discovering the "truth" in your subject, you definitely should allow your personality to influence your wordcraft--that's how the good and great journalists achieve distinction and fulfillment in their profession.

A reminder to journalist-aspirants: Your path may not be easy to practice, but at least it's easily visible. Academics may pad their pages with colorless, meaningless words and they may obscure truth using the label "academic freedom." Faddish journalists will come and go with rapid regularity. And bloggers . . . well, in this wild and wooly, unregulated medium, they will have to prove themselves responsible and capable--time and the market place will separate the wheat from the chaff. Your and my kind of journalists have only one goal. Their domain is to practice and deliver economical, bright, illuminating images that reveal the truth--from the first day out on the hustings.