Dude, Where’s Your Newspaper?

Yes, the news is less entertaining than Friends, so we need other reasons to watch. But those reasons — including voter participation, party affiliation, and educational expectations about following the news — have weakened in the past three decades. We need to turn the tide. But what can we do?

Plenty. First, we must raise our expectations for high-school students. To offer a model of how this might be done, consider the fact that while political participation and news consumption have declined, volunteerism is on the rise. When I posed that anomaly to Brandeis students, one offered what is probably the most plausible explanation: Volunteerism is a requirement for the National Honor Society and an expectation at many colleges. Why not make civic knowledge a requirement for college admissions?

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Students who don’t pay attention to politics cede their political power to their elders and their more-involved peers. And without political power they are screwed. An e-mail message about that would be a scary one indeed. —David T. Z. MindichDude, Where’s Your Newspaper? (Mindich|Chronicle)

With the summer break starting to wane, I’m pondering the task I face when I teach “Newswriting” this fall.

If you think of journalism as a noble civic vocation, one of the chief virtues of a good journalist is the ability to make the important seem interesting. A trained chimpanzee could make a TV news story out of hidden-camera footage of car wash attendants stealing change or nannies smacking their children, but campaign finance reform?

11 thoughts on “Dude, Where’s Your Newspaper?

  1. I see your points, trust me.

    I hope I do learn alot, Dr. Jerz, in Newswriting. And if I don’t, well, then I have nobody to blame but myself.

  2. I’ve been working on the projects team throughout this summer, a.k.a. the investigative team (I-Team).

    The writers on this staff work on projects for a -very- long time, and do deliver. They are few, but very valuable members of the Trib staff. I have been honored to learn from such great journalists.

    The Trib newsroom is a big, bustling place, separate from the I-Team. Most of the articles written are particular time/particular place content because the Greensburg Trib covers a large audience.

    A newspaper should have both types of staffs, and they are equally important.

    I have done both types of reporting, but mostly investigative features. I find both enjoyable, but investigative features suit my style–I can check my facts, get lengthy interviews without the impending doom of a deadline, and really understand my subject and the motives for behavior, thus writing a better story.

    Articles really aren’t “self-contained” anymore–a good investigative journalist pegs the story on a current event, or has something so amazing in their research that makes news. Creating a story for the sake of writing a story really isn’t an attractive idea.

    I’ll probably have more to say when I speak in Dr. Jerz’s Newswriting class…I don’t want to give it all away right now.

    You still want me to do that, right, Dr. Jerz?

  3. Lou, I was writing my previous message while you were writing the one that appeared just before it. In response to your most recent message, there are indeed news stories that ask the reporter to go to a particular place at a particular time and write about what happened, but maybe Amanda can tell you what percentage of the stories she’s been writing for the Trib have been that self-contained.

  4. Lou, you raise some good points. There’s plenty of demand for sports journalism, but there are also plenty of people who want to do it, just as there are people who want to do movie reviews or restaurant reviews or gadget reviews.

    There are few entry-level jobs for people who will do nothing but write the “fun” stories. It’s far more likely for you to get an entry-level job writing local stories of all kinds for a small paper. Some of those stories will be enjoyable, some will be routine, some will be exciting, and some will be local school board meetings or budget and tax reports.

    There is a certain segment of the population that finds sports completely boring. I personally find nothing interesting in the food section. Nothing. I never look at it.

    While you may not personally care that a particular organization got a $1M charitable grant, if you are ever in need of the services offered by that charity, if you are thinking of volunteering for a group, or if you got terrible advice from that group and feel that past charitable donations have been misued, then the story might be important. And while the profiles of bright teenagers winning awards or dying tragically in car accidents can start to blur together when you’ve read enough of them, if you happened to know the person who’s the subject of that profile, you’re going to expect the reporter to have spelled the names right and gotten the facts right.

    And while crime stories do draw the interest of readers, when journalists pay too much attention to crime stories, they can contribute to a culture of fear. For instance, you’ve probably known somebody who’s told you to beware of poisoned halloween candy, or razor blades in caramel apples. The only instances of poisoned Halloween candy on record are from relatives who poisoned their own kids and then tried to blame it on Halloween candy the kids received from strangers.

    As for jumping right into a big story… no newspaper is going to send an untested reporter out on a huge story assignment, in part because the big stories (like the Watergate scandal or the Clinton/Lewinsky affair) are not simple matters of one reporter overhearing a single conversation and putting it on paper, they are huge networks of information (and disinformation) that are painstakingly pieced together over weeks, months, or even years. During the time a reporter is working on a story of that magnitude, they might not be producing much other work — thus, the reporter has to be trustworthy enough that the news organization can support them for weeks or months or years during which they produce NOTHING, on the gamble that when they produce, they’ll produce big.

    I don’t watch the news… I read it online. Instead of somebody at CBS or CNN deciding that this story is worth three minutes of my time, and this story is worth ten, and this story is worth thirty seconds, I decide how much time each story is worth investing. If I’m still interested in a story after I get to the end of an article, I go to Google News and read what other news outlets wrote about the story.

    Now, because I mostly read news online, I rarely stumble across something that grabs me — like the Washington Post article on Caves. Front page of the travel section, with color pictures… not of any cave, but of the very cave system that I visited a few weeks ago. If I’d have been paging through a print issue of The Wash Post, I’d have seen it… but I’d also have seen scores of other stories that I wouldn’t have bothered reading.

    Lou, the Newswriting class will give you a good opportunity to see whether journalism is the career (or major) for you. Just like they say in Hollywood — there are no small parts, only small actors. A story about UFOs landing in Washington would be interesting even if it was poorly written — it doesn’t take much talent to interest the reader when the subject matter is that gripping. But a really good writer can take a subject that seems dry on the surface, and look beneath it or around it or back across time, to find patterns and motives and controversies and solutions that simply wouldn’t be visible to the ordinary citizen.

    The reporter’s “Who, what when where and why” are very similar to the novelist’s “character, plot, setting, and motivation.” Lou, I’ll let your creative writing teachers talk to you about such subjects as word economy, writing to deadlines, and other practical details. You’ll find that newswriting asks you to practice many of the same skills.

    I would like to raise the suggestion that “opinion” is a very broad word. People use the word “opinion” to refer to one’s first impression (“Looks like rain,” or “That cod smells bad,”, one’s serious and well-thought-out, researched conclusions (“The Toyota Sienna and the Honda Odyssey are the best minivans on the market, when it comes to safety and economy”), and one’s deepest core beliefs (“Human rights are better protected under democracy than under any other form of government.”)

    Being “opinionated,” on the other hand, could mean “Willing to ofer an opinion,” but it also could mean “Shouting one’s pre-existing beliefs loud enough to silence communication.”

  5. Trust me Amanda, I didn’t feel attacked. I understood perfectly your saying. And your right, SOMETIMES it’s better. Other times it just makes me want to sleep.

    I’d do other reporting, if I truely had the time to say, stay after school and go to the event. But like the football for example, it’s Saturdays @ 1–which is perfect for me.

  6. Lou, my comment was in no way to attack you, but to simply say that the reading the news is sometimes better than any fiction you can get a hold on.

    But, to each his/her own. Good luck with your sports reporting.

  7. Dr. Jerz, let me just start out by saying that you know I’m a very opinionated person. I’ll say what’s on my mind, and sometimes it doesn’t come out in the best way.

    Let me rephrase my point, News is not exciting for everyone. I personally try to watch the news as much as possible. But in my opinion, the average reader or watcher doesn’t want to hear about some guy volunteering or about some school board doing this, unless it affects them personally.

    As a beginning journalist, it’s the aspect of covering that school board meeting, or the county planning meeting. I just couldn’t find myself sitting there and listening, trying to write down all the important parts–when its all important. My brain can’t fathom that, which is why when writing for the Setonian, for example, I would love to just stick to the sports, or the reviews of something or even my own personal article, “In the day of a writer”

    Also if it’s “a volunteer did this, or did that, or plans on doing that.” To me, personally, its like big deal–I know that people volunteer all the time, but you don’t hear about it in every single newspaper edition every day, because if you did, again in my opinion, people would just stop caring. Why? Because its not a “once-in-a-lifetime” story.

    But things like sports, which do happen every day, excite me. Especially when you hear “Big Ben did this” “The NHL is back in business”. The average person wants to read about that, not “Joe Smith donated 1M dollars to THIS! Charity becaue he’s a multi-billionaire” or “West County decided to raise taxes on babyteething” unless they have a baby. But then again, I can only state my opinion, which is all I’ve been doing.

    I know that I, and again this is personally, would rather hear about, or write about a car cash that ended with the cops getting the bad guy, or the car chase that ended tragically. Why? Because this is how you get people to get their heart, to get their story and to get their feet off the ground, so to speak. Again, why? Because you give them a story that matters, a story needs ALL the facts and you make the writer thing, you make the writer put into practice what they learned.

    If you give them a story that is about a volunteer or something less “important” you’re only going to get, and again this is in my opinion, that journalist to think, in his own opinion that this line of work sucks and maybe he should find something else.

    That is to say, that its not that its important to start small and work your way up. I just believe in the opposite, work that person a big assignment to get their feet wet and to show them what your company is all about.

    Oh, and Amanda, we can have that talk, but truth be told the only reason I’m on the Setonian staff, or anything else that does with jornalism, is so that my mom doesn’t complain about me not having a life. Sorry to be blunt, but that’s the truth. I’d much rather stick to researching and writing a novel myself.

    Sorry to be long-winded, but that’s how I feel. If you need any further clarifying, please do not hesitate to email me.

    Thanks

    Lou

  8. Newswriting..ah yes fun..

    yeah, ok, I was being a little saracastic there.

    The news is boring, people need to accept that. There isn’t a car chase every day as the cops try to make a glove fit. Nor are there men molesting children, then getting away with it.

    You can report on volunteerism all you want, but eventually people get sick of hearing it and just turning off the news.

    Make it a requirement to get into a college? I’d be out of SHU then. I don’t volunteer, if I’m gonna do a job for someone, I expect to get paid for it–somehow.

    But boy, I can’t wait to hear what wonderful and exciting new rules to writing the news there are!

    oh, that was sarcasm too..sorry. I’m in a sarcastic mood today.

  9. Lou, why do people need to accept that news is boring? Of course, not everyone is interested in the same things, but journalists need to hone their skills on the school board meetings and county planning meetings, so that when the huge stories break, they are ready for the coverage that people use to determine what cities they want to live in, whether they feel a war is justified, etc.

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