Reflections on Journalism

As I prepare to teach my journalism class at UCSD I think about what it is I want to teach my students. I want to teach them that being a journalist is one of the greatest jobs there is. I want them to know journalists are one of the last groups in America who get to really experience the world first hand, and tell about it, rather than through a filter, and that this is a privilege, an honor, and something that should be taken seriously. Whether you mean to or not, you change the world and how it thinks. This is a great responsibility. I want them to know they are America's filters, digesters, activists, watchdogs and narrative storytellers. I want them to know that journalists are critical to making democracy work. I want them to know that the world is changing, print newspapers may be dying, but that the profession of telling stories, chronicling your nation, city and community's stories--in whatever form--will always be necessary. I want them to be exposed--in my single course -- to writing traditionally, to writing first person, and to be open to telling stories in different ways. And I want them to know that underneath whatever form journalism takes in the future, they still need how to observe fairly, report accurately, and make sure their facts are correct.

Intellectually, I am open to all of this.

But still, I had an experience the other night that shocked me. I took the first chapter of my mama book to my writing group. I was scared. Really scared. I read it. When I finished the room was quiet. I braced myself. This was the upshot. They like my personal stuff more than my journalistic stuff. They like MY story, laced with others, more than just others.

They want it to sound more personal, and less reported. This doesn't mean they don't want the facts, that they don't want to know what I found out, and that they don't want rigorous process behind it, but they want and delight the personal narrative, and felt less engaged during the more traditional journalism part.

Now I myself have long ridiculed and ranted against journalism's fear of the first person, of opinions, of personal narrative laced with fantastic reporting. As long as the personal is clearly identifiable from the facts, I think that is the most powerful form of storytelling. And I myself laugh at newspaper articles where reporters go through awkward linguistic contortions to avoid saying the word "I" in a story. (Instead saying something like, "A reporter entered the bar and...when they mean themselves).

Still, it was a blow to me to feel in a room how the room was completely taken by the personal story, and how their eyes glazed over when I turned to my journalistic reporting. Sure, I know I could work to make my language more vivid, more powerful, more pithy, sharper. And to an extent, that is all true. But it is also true that personal writing is by nature more powerful. It made me think that newspapers problems with storytelling are bigger than we may even realize. And it made me think that in a world that is increasingly large, impersonal, and corporate, it is the small, personal stories that people crave, that they click into, that captures their interest, and that will serve as the hook to get into the large issues that really matter.

My thoughts are still evolving...