Bridging the gaps in the journalism profession

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Bridging the gaps in the journalism profession (7/22/05)

Growing up in a military/government home gave me a fairly unique perspective on the inner workings of the government. After high school I deliberately decided to attend a business school to try to balance out my knowledge base. One of the first things I did was join the college newspaper as a news writer, and then as the news editor. Fundamentally I learnt journalism just wasn't for me. I couldn't stand just writing about things that were important to me. I wanted to be able to work on them and interact with them. So I only lasted a year there, which isn't a lot really but it was still quite a learning experience and balanced nicely with the journalism stuff I did in high school.

Moving on to college politics after the newspaper, specifically student government, was quite insightful because I had reported on student government as a news writer. It was great, and also horrifying, to see both sides of how these two disparate groups interacted. Back at the newspaper I'd been introduced to a few of the concepts of writing a news story:

We needed at least three quotes, and they needed to be balanced. In other words: one pro, one con, and one neutral. Having more than three quotes was good as long as the entire story wasn't quotes. Often one side of quotes far out balanced the other, but as long as we had three minimum, it wasn't a problem.
We were told to write the story in an inverted pyramid shape, which means the most important bits of news first and the less important stuff as the story went on. This was done for a couple of reasons:
1. Statistically, the average news reader only reads the first two paragraphs in a news story. As such the important stuff can't be half way down or the reader would likely miss a lot and think the newspaper was really boring.
2. Editors have to not only catch grammatical errors and the like, but also try to make the editor fit into a set space on the page. Consequently they may subtract paragraphs and it is easier to do this with the inverted pyramid shape because they can just cut from the end of the story without having to actually read it, saving valuable time in an industry that is always short on time. However, if the important stuff identified above is all about one side of the story, such as in the case of an update on a very well known story line, and the update was simply a report on what one said did, the journalist is forced to go out and get points to counter it. The top writes itself, the counter points don't so they go to the bottom, and the editor cuts from the bottom...
Keep the verbs neutral. This one is very difficult. Consider the following examples, with the verb in bold:
1. Neutral: Wells said "it is a difficult issue that we don't understand but we're making every effort to."
2. Con: Wells muttered "it is a difficult issue that we don't understand but we're making every effort to."
3. Pro: Wells explained "it is a difficult issue that we don't understand but we're making every effort to."
In the world of journalism all of these are valid but can affect how the reader perceives the story. The reader is depending on the writer to inform them, and if that is done using negative introductions to quotes that will then move down to the reader perceiving the quote maker negatively. The problem is "said" gets old really quick, and almost all the alternatives communicate a bias of one type or another. One way to combat the "said" problem is using surrounding sentances such as:

Wells explained what he meant. "It is a difficult issue that we don't understand but we're making every effort to" he says.

Here too the verb and often even nouns in the first sentance can be a problem, just as before. Sentances that come afterwords can too, even if it's a new paragraph.
The writer, often the interviewer taking the quotes, is free to use whatever the interviewee says and shouldn't mangle their words. Generally this works great but sometimes the quotes can be made to appear to say different things. Observe:
1. Neutral: "it is a difficult issue that we don't understand but we're making every effort to."
2. Con: "it is a difficult issue that we don't understand"
3. Pro: "we're making every effort to [understand]"
Amazingly all of these are perfectly acceptable interpretations of what the interviewee said, because they are, in fact, the words the person said. A word to the wise: craft your sentences ahead of time and use them carefully. Do not get baited into talking off the cuff. Between the use of brackets and ellipses you can be made to say anything. Remember too that words cost money in journalism. You're quotes can and will be shortened.

All of this is important because you need to see how a journalist works. So, really, we've got some major liabilities here not only with the writing process but the interviewing and editorial processes as well. There is no oversight by a government body nor much in the way of credentials beyond experience and the public's eye, which is shaped by the journalists of course. I'd like to propose two other things that could immediately make things better.

First, Edward Tufte's idea of sparklines helped me think of something similar for articles in newspapers and magazines. Rather than just the size of a word a small graph could run along the entire height of the article and convey information to the reader. The instinct is there for a pro/con/neutral graph but that would really depend on perspective and more often than not, is too simplistic for most situations. Rather, the goal should be to arm the reader with an ability to read the article in full knowledge of the writer's intentions. Rather than reflecting the politics of the writer, the reader, I believe, would be far better off simply knowing how close the writer is to the content being discussed. By this I mean it should reflect the writer's familiarity about the issue but also if the current quote is from a friend or acquaintance or someone they had to cold call. The graph can lean towards the text of the writer to reflect a story with which they are close to, as so:

And one they aren't, as so:

Graph of an article the writer isn't close to

In practice the graphs will appear far less one sided because of the closeness to the quoted person as described above:

Graph of an article showing how close they are to certain sections

If it isn't readily apparent, the box at the top of the graph is the average of the entire graph.

With such graphs the reader can make an almost immediate determination about the writer's knowledge of the subject and of their closeness to those who gave the quotes. A story with a little gray at the top and a lot towards the bottom would clearly be a biased story, while one with a mix would not. This would also serve to help the writer remain unbiased, and thus raise the standard of the stories. A reader reading a story could see a quote and glance at the graph to know what context to take it in, providing a useful in-story metric to the reader as well.

The second idea revolves around the idea of the positioning of the press within an organizational context. It amazes me that we have only two "camps" here: the PR folks on one side and reporters outside of the organization on the other. The very people who we expect to be un-biased, the journalists, aren't brought into the organization they're trying to report on and so, nearly by definition, they're almost immediately at a loss with regard to their telling of the story. They won't understand the intricacies of the developments, the current and historical environments in which they were set it, or the abilities of the people involved in all of this.

It seems like there must be room for a mixture of the two, a sort of "embedded reporter" working within an organization, going to the important meetings and observing the minute developments that don't need to be reported but none the less would improve the content of those stories regarding those developments that do need to be reported. Precedence exists already within two groups, the White House Press Corps and reporters embedded with military outfits during wars. Censorship and how it would be handled would be an issue that likely would need to change as needed, and so I won't address it, nor how such embedded reporters should be chosen because there are probably some folks out there with quite enlightened opinions on the matter already.

Between these two concepts the public should be able to make truly informed opinions about the issues they are reading about. While most probably wouldn't bother to look at the minutia of the graphs or the biography of the embedded reporter, if there is something that strikes them wrong they can, and it is something that others challenging them in discussions can rely on to initiate a change of opinion if need be.