Reporting is where journalism begins.
Without reporting -- gather facts, information, and views and putting all those together -- journalism doesn't exist. So we owe a deep debt to those who spend their lives doing the tough job of reporting.
Deborah Howell, ombudsman for the Washington Post, has a good take on what it takes to be a reporter in her current column.What makes a good reporter? Endless curiosity and a deep need to know what is happening. Then, the ability to hear a small clue and follow it. When Post reporter Dana Priest first heard "a tiny, tiny piece" of what turned out to be the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal, she couldn't ignore it.
She also quotes former Post editor Ben Bradlee, not a bad reporter himself:
They've got to love what they're doing; they've got to be serious about turning over rocks, opening doors. The story drives you. It's part of your soul.
Read the whole thing.
The New York Times has an article this morning on non-profit journalism -- an idea that has been around for a while. In fact, the Christian Science Monitor had a similar article, spotlighting the VoiceofSanDiego as the Times article did, back in February.
There are also articles in the Columbia Journalism Review, American Journalism Review, and elsewhere.
The basic idea is that a foundation or wealthy, public spirited individual puts up the money to fund journalistic efforts of one type or another. Sometimes, as the Times article points out, these efforts are locally based as in San Diego, Minnesota, Chicago and St. Louis.
Sometimes they are national, such as ProPublica or the Center for Investigative Reporting.
These organizations are most likely to use the web for the publishing and distribution of their products.
There are legitimate independence issues that can be raised about these efforts. What are the motivations of those who put up the money? Do they try to influence the journalism that is being produced?
But the fact that these questions can be raised do not make these efforts or organizations unworthy. Far from it. They can offer a valuable service to the public in an age when traditional media are abandoning their journalistic roles. They can offer outlets and employment, even if it is only temporary, to budding young journalists who understand the web and social networking far more intuitively some older folk.
In fact, ultimately the strength and staying power of these non-profit organizations will be in the people they hire rather than the journalism they produce. That's an idea that I want to develop in a later post.
- Obama is a former professor. He taught at the University of Chicago Law School for 12 years.
- Michelle Obama worked in the administration of the University of Chicago.
- Joe Biden has been an adjunct professor at the Widener University School of Law for 17 years.
- Jill Biden is an English instructor at Delaware Technical and Community College's Stanton-Wilmington campus.
The article then quotes a number of academicians about Obama's professorial and deliberative style. One drew the comparison between him and Bill Clinton, another ex-law prof:
But Mr. Obama must avoid the temptation to overdose on deliberation, says Ms. Hoff. (Joan Hoff, a research professor of history at Montana State University at Bozeman.) The nation witnessed the hazards of that tendency during the presidency of Bill Clinton, another former law professor. "Clinton would talk everything to death and not come to a decision," she says, particularly with regard to delayed decisions about Kosovo, Bosnia, and Rwanda.
And then there was the ultimate academician, Woodrow Wilson.
The article is titled "America Elects a Professor in Chief."
National Public Radio had a story this morning speculating on how open the new Barack Obama administration will be. The story quotes former University of Alabama student (and friend) Christi Parsons, who covered the state legislature in Springfield for the Chicago Tribune when Obama was a state senator.
The gist of the story is that when he was in Springfield, Obama understood the press and conducted himself in an open manner.
But will that translate into an open presidency? Probably not, although we may finally see a president with the self-confidence of a John Kennedy in dealing with the press.
