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Update LXXIII Reporting Methodology Is the Reporter an Empiricist? Journalism students and young reporters are warned not to prejudge events, to hold off until they do their reporting before they draw any conclusions. Otherwise, they are instructed, their reporting may be colored by their assumptions. The theory that knowledge emerges from experience has merit both on the job and in answering critics with the assurance that journalists are empiricists, never imposing their ideas and assumptions on the events they cover. On the job, empiricism supposedly allows the reporter the widest view of events. But in the practice of journalism, the reality is different. The fact is that as soon as a reporter is given an assignment, he or she begins to develop ideas about the event to be covered or the person to be interviewed. The reporter thinks of possible leads early on. These lead-ideas direct the reporter’s reporting, his/her questions and observations. The Reality of Reporting “The best journalists may adhere to the orthodoxy of their craft verbally, but they always have an animating idea they apply to the event they’re covering,” says Sidney Blumenthal in an article he wrote for The New Republic. He says that by “starting with a premise in advance of doing a story,” reporters can move closer to the event “than when they are operating by the rigid empirical method.” In other words, the act of reporting begins with the adoption of a tentative theme for the reporting. This is consistent with a modern theory of knowledge, best summed up this way: “You don’t know what you’ve seen unless you know what you are looking for.” Lincoln Steffens, the great muckraker, based his reporting on this concept. He described his trip to Philadelphia to check on graft among officials as being based on “knowing just what to look for.” He had a scheme in mind that he had sketched out for his editor, S.S.McClure. But McClure had objected. He told Steffens that such theorizing would impede, if not distort, his reporting. Steffens responded by telling McClure that “one of the methods of scientific research is to form a hypothesis and test it with the facts, and one of the tests of truth was to base a prediction upon your theory and watch the outcome of the event.” If the tentative theory goes nowhere, a new theory is adopted and tested. Experienced reporters always think leads as they cover an event. They “frame the lead while the story is unfolding,” say John W. Chancellor and Walter R. Mears, veteran reporters whose advice is even more urgent today when the web cries for constant replenishment. Try This in Class You can test this concept of reporting by setting up this simple scenario for students: You are in the newsroom and you are told: 1. A fire breaks out at 11 a.m. in a campus dormitory. 2. A fire breaks out at 2 a.m. in a campus dormitory. Ask students for their immediate reactions after they hear No. 1 and No. 2. Most students will immediately see the difference--that before noon the dormitory is usually deserted whereas at 2 a.m. students are asleep in the dorm. So the immediate response to No. 1 may be something about checking the cause and the damage and possible injuries and the response to No. 2 is to ask officials at once about injuries, deaths, escapes and rescues. The Rich Get Richer: Journalists and their Bosses Some Reap Rewards, Others Given Pay Cuts These are not the best of years for working journalists. Old timers have taken retirement or been bought out. Salaries have been cut, work hours increased. Coverage has been cut back. Youngsters, less costly, are nudging veterans off beats. But the bosses have prospered. A few weeks ago, Gannett’s chief executive resigned after six years running the operation. He took over when the company’s stock price was $75 and left when it was less than a sixth of that. Under his guidance, the payroll went from 52,000 to 32,000 and coverage at the 82 Gannett papers shrank. But Craig A. Dubow left with $37 million in retirement, health and disability payments, on top of $16 million in salary and bonuses in his last two years. Peter Lewis, a former Des Moines Register reporter bought by Gannett after he left the paper, wrote in his blog, “Can anyone argue that Gannett newspapers and journalism are better today, and that news consumers are better served? How did Mr. Dubow and Gannett serve the consumer? They laid off journalists. They cut the pay of those who remained, while demanding that they work longer. They closed news bureaus. They slashed newsroom budgets. As revenue fell, and stock prices tanked, and product quality deteriorated, they rewarded themselves with huge pay raises and bonuses.” Rupert Murdoch, under fire in England and under investigation in New York, pocketed $33.3 million so far this year, and son James, also under investigation, was given $17.9 million. The Chicago Tribune Company’s bankruptcy arrangement makes its current leadership eligible for a bonus pool that contains an estimated $26.4 million to $32.4 million. If past leadership is included, the payouts could total $115 million. David Carr, whose column, “The Media Equation,” runs in The New York Times, writes: The drawn-out legal process hasn’t stopped lawyers and the current managers from picking the carcass clean. The Tribune story includes overleveraged purchases, feckless management and a culture of personal enrichment… Carr asks, “But how in the world could a board, any board, justify such huge payouts to media executives at a time like this?” When Relevant? Religious References in News Stories When Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, spoke to followers in Washington, readers of The Washington Post were given two differing accounts of the event. The reporter assigned to the talk summarized Farrakhan’s speech as promoting an economic program for blacks. Two days later, a Post columnist wrote that the most newsworthy aspect of the talk was the enthusiastic approval of the 10,000 people present to Farrakhan’s mockery of the Holocaust and his attack on “the wickedness” of the Jews. Coverage of a talk Farrakhan later gave in New York was also handled with care. The New York Post reporter wrote: Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan turned Madison Square Garden into a mini-Nuremberg as he brought his message of hate to the city he called “the capital of the Jews.” The reporter’s desk toned down this lead. In an interview, the reporter later told a New Yorker writer that “the outrageous aspects of the night were underplayed by most papers. All the news media should have gone out of their way to say what a lot of outrageous nonsense this man is preaching. He represents a philosophy we have heard before. It is very close to being Hitlerite.” Include or Ignore? The media have to walk a thin line between accurately describing an event and avoiding material that may strike people as offensive or inflammatory. For example: references to the religion of someone in the news had been handled cautiously, tentatively. Nowadays the media are less tentative. Here’s a recent item in The New York Times: : Lawmakers approved a bill on Thursday with new rules for abortion clinics. Democrats and abortion rights supporters said the rules were likely to force the closing of Virginia’s 21 abortion clinics. Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican and Catholic, supports the measure.… The reporter felt the reference to the governor’s religion was as relevant as his politics. Was it? You might want to discuss this with your students. Memo: Get Out of the Office Enterprise Reporting Wanted Jesse Angelo, the editor-in-chief of the iPad-only tabloid The Daily sent a note to his reporters that you might quote to students: We need to get out there and start finding more compelling stories from around the country—not just scraping the web and the wires, but getting out on the ground and reporting. Find me an amazing human story at a trial the rest of the media is missing. Find me a school district where the battle over reform is being fought and tell the human tales. Find a town that is going to be unincorporated because it’s broke. Find me a story of corruption and malfeasance in a state capitol that no one has found. Find something new, different, exclusive and awesome. Find me the oldest dog in America, or the richest man in South Dakota. Force the new White House secretary to download The Daily for the first time because everyone at the gaggle is asking about a story we broke. Get in front of a story and make it ours—force the rest of the media to follow us. It’s stories that will keep people coming back to The Daily—we’ve assembled a crack news team, so let’s show the world what we can do. In other words, GOYA/KOD: Get off your ass; knock on doors, the advice an editor gave his reporters who were inclined to report from their office chairs. Testing Prospective J-Students Does the Grammar Test Work? The usually somnolent journalism listserv sprang to life last month when a journalism educator asked about the effectiveness of grammar tests for students wanting to major in journalism. Several instructors described the test they require in response to the inquiry by Tom Clanin (California State University, Fullerton). They seemed pleased with their tests…except for Bernie Ankney (Samford University) who wrote: I'm not sure how effective it is. I believe it screens out students with serious grammar, spelling and punctuation problems. But I don't think it's real predictive of success in the major. Ankney is onto something. A student may be able to match subject and verb, know the difference between an adjective and an adverb, avoid comma splices and still be unfit for the first reporting and writing course. If the student were asked to write four coherent paragraphs on a subject in the news we might have some idea whether he or she is capable of journalistic work. A Rehab Course I believe many of our aspirants would flunk a writing test. The question, then, is what to do with these victims of the Twitter Age who want to study journalism. Send them on to major in psychology or business, or nudge them into a journalism rehab course? I favor a shot at rehab…if the course is properly designed. A good course could not only make the student writing-proficient, but might determine whether the student belongs in journalism. Anyone willing to suffer through a noncredit course that demands constant writing and rewriting on current events would seem a good fit for journalism. I’m less certain of how to design a reporting test. Many journalism educators are familiar with the student who becomes incapacitated when asked to conduct an interview. -0Note: For those of you whose students need a grammar, punctuation and writing pickup, you might look at material McGraw Hill has made available online free at www.mcgraw-hill.com/mencher12e. Go to Information Center at the left and under it you will find Learning Center. Access Student Edition. You’ll see three listings: Workbook, NRW Plus and Brush Up. Here’s the introduction to Brush Up: Welcome to Brush Up: A Quick Guide to Basic Writing and Math Skills Instructions Brush Up is divided into three sections: I. Diagnostic Exercises -These evaluations will help you determine the topics you need to work on. II. Topics and Exercises -Topics: Instructional material covers grammar, punctuation, spelling, style and math. -Exercises: Each instructional topic is followed by a group of self-teaching exercises. Seven tests are also included. III. Review Exercises -Review exercises provide realistic news writing work to test your skills. Directions for use: To begin using the Brush Up program, select the section you wish to explore from the Brush Up Table of Contents menu located below. Once you select a section, the Table of Contents menu will expand to show the subtopics available. Using the Brush Up Table of Contents menu you may either jump right to a subtopic or scroll through the content in the right frame. --- NRW Plus and Workbook also contain self-teaching exercises for journalism students. The Light Touch Time Out for Laughter We used to call them brights when I worked for the United Press, and every month bureaus were expected to send a batch to the New York office for distribution to clients. A friend who recalls those sunnier days recently sent me a collection of headlines and story snippets that had me recalling our search through newspapers for brights to send on. Here are a few that you might toss at your students to liven up a lecture. Reports from the police blotter were a rich source of material: l:14 a.m.: Caller reports hitting an intruder in the head with an axe. Notes that the intruder “was in the mirror.” Theft: A woman in the 1900 block of 129th Lane Northeast reported Oct. 15 that someone must have stolen her mail because she did not receive birthday cards from some of her friends. Wal-Mart: Police receive a report of a newborn infant found in a trash can. Upon investigation, officers discovered it was a burrito. A deputy responded to a report of a vehicle stopping at mail boxes. It was the mailman. Another treasure trove we culled was the correction column: Correction Due to incorrect information received from the Clerk of Courts Office, Deanne L. Marchant, 38, Decater, was incorrectly listed as being fined for prostitution in Wednesday’s paper. The charge should have been failure to stop at a railroad crossing. The classifieds usually turned up something we could send on: TURKEY FOR SALE. Partially eaten. Only eight days old. Both drumsticks still intact. $23. 470-356 8356 TOMBSTONE: Standard gray. A good buy for Someone named Grady. 509-375 6823 1995 NISSAN Maxima, green, leather, loaded, CD, auto start, sunroof, 4-door, good condition, $4500. Not for sale. For Sale: Wedding dress. Never used. 235989-0954 Then there were the headlines: Fish need water, Feds Say Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop, Find Weapons Statistics show that Teen pregnancy Drops off significantly After age 25 Lecture Material Goodbye to He Said-She said Reporting In a story about the Republican presidential campaign of Herman Cain, the reporter described Cain’s “surge in the polls” that shows “no signs of deflating”… “although his tax plan was laid low in debates.” No question that the first two statements are objective reporting. But the third? Well, perhaps that was the consensus of most observers. But what about?: “…his candidacy still has an ad-libbed quality.” “As he hopscotched through northern Alabama, his speeches were light on substance and heavy on bromides… .” “…Mr. Cain’s stump speech, a combination of Leadership 101 and simple policy formulas,… .” Clearly, these are the conclusions of the reporter, Trip Gabriel, who The New York Times has assigned to cover Cain’s campaign. The newspaper allows, if not encourages, its reporters to go beyond what I call Level I reporting, the faithful transcribing of what sources say and do, stenographic journalism. Elmer Davis, a thoughtful radio journalist, years ago described this kind reporting as “false objectivity that takes everything at face value and lets the public be imposed on by the charlatan with the most brazen front… .” Davis expressed the frustration of a generation of journalists who felt hemmed in by the demands of what was defined as journalistic objectivity. Allowing the reporter to move into interpretive journalism, Level II, Davis recognized, can be dangerous. Reporters have to be careful of crossing the line that separates reasonable conclusions from bias. The Republican primary season should provide your class with examples of Level II reporting that are reasonable and those that could be considered biased. Assignments Women’s Work The workplace for women has widened considerably in the last three decades. Once confined to jobs as librarians, teachers, seamstresses, cooks and waitresses, women have steadily moved into the professions—lawyers, doctors, certified accountants, and they are the majority in many university professional programs. Assignment: Trace the enrollment by gender in your school’s professional programs over the past decades. What accounts for the decline of male students in many disciplines? Churches and Politics Federal tax law prohibits churches from engaging in partisan politics, but a report by a U.S. senate staff committee recommends repeal. Assignment: Ask local pastors, priests and rabbis what they think of the repeal. Movie Days The advent of television caused many movie theaters to close. But in recent years, movies have made a comeback. Assignment: Trace the closure/reopening of movie houses in town. Markswomen In some communities, increasing numbers of women have applied for gun permits. Some have joined gun clubs. Assignment: Interview women who carry guns or practice marksmanship. Are they doing it because of concern about crime? What are the crime figures for the city? What do authorities think of having guns in the home? . Worth Quoting Imitation I may cite some horrible example of jargon or pomposity to warn against the prevailing bloatage, but I don’t deal in junk. Writing is learned by imitation, and I want my students to imitate the best. --William Zinsser Worthwhile Technique is hardly worth talking about unless it’s used for something worth doing. --Pauline Kael Experience But nothing rots the life of the mind more than the immunity to experience. --Leon Wieseltier Journalists Journalism is a kind of profession, or craft, or racket for people who never wanted to grow up and go out into the real world. If you’re a good journalist, what you do is live a lot of things vicariously, and report them for other people who want to live vicariously. --Harry Reasoner Yes to Skepticism I try to teach students to challenge authority by asking hard questions. I want them to develop a strong sense of skepticism. In a sense, I’m trying to acculturate them into the profession of journalism. … Two critical values are idealism and skepticism. These seem oppositional, but in our craft their pairing can offer us a potent way to engage the world. For young journalists, these two values inspire as well as energize them to do useful, even penetrating work. --Lou Ureneck Experience How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. --Henry David Thoreau Classic Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter. --Thomas Jefferson -0. NOTE: Comments are welcome: [email protected] . Past issues of Update are available at www.mhhe.com/mencher12e. ##