My absorption in Big Weighty Issues kept me from seeing other kinds of potential news stories.

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I have an odd recollection of riding back to the station one day with a cameraman who was interested in some kind of construction that was going on alongside the freeway.  He wanted to know what its purpose was, thinking there might be a story in it.  I murmured something polite, but I never even considered picking up the phone when we got back to the office to find out.  To me, there was such an exciting “bigger world” out there in the world at large that I couldn’t see why he wanted to muck around in this humdrum local stuff.

Only much later did I realize that the cameraman was showing a natural and healthy journalistic interest in the real life going on all around him, and that I was neglecting an important function for a reporter.  Somebody, after all, has to take a “bottoms up” approach—noticing things in ordinary life that are new, interesting, or otherwise noteworthy that have not been the subject of media attention to date, and bringing them to more general awareness. 

This, in fact, is the essence of original journalism.  When we don’t do it, our work can’t help but be derivative and out of touch, because sticking to Name Brand Issues is ultimately just demanding that the rest of the media be already focused on something before we’ll consent to have a look at it for ourselves.  Making too big a deal out of the imprimatur of a Name Brand Issue gets us bound up in a kind of occupational narcissism.

 

(c) COPYRIGHT 2000 ROBERT WINTER.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.