Lessons From the Paper
Food for thought from behind the headlines:
My giant take-home of late comes from the acknowledgment of one of my greatest weaknesses as a journalist. Accosting total strangers on the street—particularly college students—terrifies me in the same manner that speaking to large groups of people terrifies others. I avoid it, I stammer, I pass dozens of people as I try to psych myself up to talk to them.
I am still innately a very introverted person. Introversion can superficially be overcome only through the examination and practice of “putting on a good show.” Still, there are pockets of it that are more difficult than others. This is one difficulty for me. Perhaps one day I’ll move beyond it. Perhaps not.
Journalism may as well be dead
And you want to know why?
Too many of the news outlets -online and elsewhere- bury stories because they lack the sensationalist flavor that the editors hoped for. News becomes “viral” because the media outlets make it so through subjective manipulation and deceptive headlines. What ever happened to the integrity of the newspapers and publications to simply report the news -regardless of whether or not it had “viral” value to it? No wonder so much of our media coverage is celebrity-driven. We have lost our ability to not only think abstractly but to express ourselves in as much of an unbiased way as possible.
