Recently, I was invited to speak at Francis Howell Central High School in suburban St. Louis about best journalism practices, and came up with this presentation on the wisdom of the profession gleaned outside of book-learning:
<div style="margin-bottom:5px"> <strong> The Secret to Great Journalism </strong> from <strong>David Sheets</strong> </div>
Recently, I was invited to speak to journalism students at Francis Howell Central High School near St. Louis about the lessons journalism serves up outside the classroom. Here, then, is the presentation I gave, listing practical advice over book-learning:
A reminder to journalists covering the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., this week: Watch what you say.
The urge to step outside of your professional selves and wax opinionated will be strong, thanks to the polarized political air filling the convention arena, but also because of electronic media’s rising demands that journalists discard attempts at objectivity to distinguish their brand — the new watchword in digital engagement.
Yield to temptation this week, and risk winding up like David Chalian, former Washington bureau chief for Yahoo and now a likely case study at j-schools and multimedia labs everywhere.
Chalian was about to be interviewed by ABCNews.com at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., last week regarding Hurricane Isaac’s turn away from Florida toward New Orleans and the potential effect of that change on the delegates’ discourse, and was caught on an open microphone implying GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign was indifferent to specific persons in the storm’s projected path.
“Feel free to say: They’re not concerned at all,” Chalian was heard advising someone with ABCNews.com. “They are happy to have a party with black people drowning.”
What followed was another kind of storm led by Yahoo’s immediate firing of Chalian and subsequent apology to Romney’s campaign, saying the remark “was inappropriate and does not represent the views of Yahoo.” A crowd of journalists and pseudo-journalists immediately added their voices to the maelstrom, alternately defending and admonishing Chalian and Yahoo, and raising debate over the value of opinion in news reporting.
The debate becomes acute in Charlotte, and may turn the convention’s attention more toward media than politics. One side says broadly that a journalist’s opinion adds perspective and humanizes reporting; the other side insists it disrupts a delicate balance in otherwise non-partisan or non-advocacy news coverage. At the least, both sides say, voicing an opinion makes clear what journalists are thinking and rationalizes their behaviors.
All this has put journalists and their audiences on the defensive, and creates the perception that journalists in general lack judiciousness. Critics categorize them as “left” or “right” of reality, though the critics often exist in their own reality. Add to this the general vilification of facts central to any wisdom, especially if those facts cant perceptibly in particular direction, and the journalist’s goal of objective, unbiased reporting becomes practically impossible.
Mind you, objectivity is only a goal, and a tough one at that. The lesson I learned on this was simple enough: A j-school professor once gave my class a list of information on a mimeographed sheet and asked us to write a news story based on just those printed details. Toward the hour’s end, he read out loud the first few paragraphs of 10 completed stories. Not one was written exactly the same way. Were everyone in class absolutely objective, none of the stories would have been different.
That’s because we all are prisoners of perspective, with frames of reference adjusted for slightly different focuses. Journalists, however, are charged with adjusting their focus to see the root causes of action or inaction. The trained journalist is inculcated like a scientist — examining and re-examining theories and testing the veracity of each. Sure, opinions matter even in science, as nobody wants, say, doctors who can’t relate to patients because their judgments are limited to what they’ve read in medical journals.
But everyone in Charlotte at the DNC this week will have an opinion. The real news will be the facts plucked from this made-for-TV sea of subjectivity.
Decades ago, those who owned the presses directed every ebb and flow of public opinion. This control persisted until the public’s trust was broken. The Bay of Pigs, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Pentagon Papers leak, Watergate — these all helped reinforce the importance of unbiased news media in curtailing government and institutional injustice.
Today, when so many people are ready to weigh opinions as facts, and legitimacy is quantified in decibels, journalistic objectivity and restraint still shine like diamonds in a coal mine and remain the best measures of professionalism. That’s why journalists should mind their words while in Charlotte, or risk looking like charlatans.
(This post originally appeared in "Net Worked," the digital blog of the Society of Professional Journalists.)
It’s amazing the things that we see people tweet about. Personal beliefs. Private conversations. Elicit behavior. Groundless criticism. Uneducated perspective.
Yes, I’m talking about journalists, too.
Sure, some genuine news seeps through to the Twitterverse — the brilliant coverage by Andy Carvin of last year’s “Arab Spring” foremost among the examples. (Remarkably, a year later, his work still sets the standard.) Otherwise, what remains on that social network largely amounts to boorishness and self-aggrandizement, impugning and assuming, snobbery and effrontery.
When I came up through the journalism ranks, any sort of spotlight-hogging was frowned upon as ethically dubious, if not forbidden by company policy. Today, a persistent and effusive social media presence is considered essential to one’s employment, if for no other reason than to continually trumpet a media “brand.”
This deep bow to branding waxes ominous, thanks largely to such popular social media measuring sticks as Klout assigning a manufactured importance to digital socialization — an importance weighted in favor of quantity instead of quality. If we agree to hold up these sticks as accurate, then news reporting via social media is bound not to be.
Why? Because there’s a certain assurance news consumers get from a journalist’s professional detachment, and we see that assurance petering out now as news providers strive to be heard above the loud partisan polemic drowning rational thought — a polemic they help stir up.
The solution, short of wiping social media off the map, is greater attentiveness toward distinguishing personal from professional content. Though there are claims that a personal touch demystifies media and as a result makes news more consumable, personalization also blurs the line separating judgment from fact. And when journalists apply it, they put their profession at risk of being marginalized by “citizen” journalists who insist they’re merely following the example.
So, then, make that example an admirable one:
Separate personal from professional tweets — If this means creating separate Twitter accounts, so be it. And try not to use the company logo or any derivative as a personal avatar.
Exercise care with criticism — Do you love “50 Shades of Grey”? Do you hate the movie remake of “Spider-Man”? That’s fine, but keep those opinions off all professional social media accounts, unless it has a discernible job relevance. Otherwise, inserting opinion only waters down what little objectivity a journalist can muster.
Keep company matters inside the company — There may be discord between management and staff, or personnel matters that prove irksome, but venting discontent via veiled insult on social media not only undermines others’ faith in you, it also could prove actionable in a court of law. In the same vein, honesty regarding one’s own reporting or editing errors may evoke pangs of guilt and frustration, but it reinforces credibility and respectability as well.
Rein in the urge to be defensive — By its nature, journalism invites criticism, warranted or not. Certainly, some of that criticism can be mean-spirited and vindictive, instead of constructive. Avoid driving a conversation further down the same dark road. As humorist Mark Twain once said, “Never argue with stupid people; they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
Resist posting vacation and food photos — It’s always good to get away from it all when possible; it’s bad to drag readers and viewers along. That beach picture with Diamond Head in the background, while pretty, smacks of braggadocio, and may even suggest to others a laxity at work — especially if the picture puts you in one place while the calendar says you should be somewhere else. Food photos, on the other hand, pose a different problem, one rooted in esthetics. Put simply, food never looks as good in social media as it does in person.
Avoid posting sales pitches — Ensure personal brand integrity by not promoting other brands in tweets through sales pitches or links to special deals. Leave that up to the sales people who are supposed to market those products.
The crisp suits and tuxedos are put away, the gowns and evening dresses are hung as well. America’s journalists have packed their finest threads for another year, and the shining plaques and embossed certificates that prompted such fashion displays are already up on shelves, bookcases and desktops across this wide nation.
This is because journalism’s two-month season of giving itself awards recently ended; everything from Pulitzers to proclamations went out in rapid order, ranging in purpose from national recognition to just a pat on the back. It’s an unabashedly narcissistic season in which we journalists look back at our work to see what we did best, or did right, this past year, and try to justify among ourselves the value and importance of it.
Absent unimpeachable proof from our readers and viewers that they think we’re doing the right thing, it’s the optimum means of self-gratification available to us.
And yet, the implied veracity has come into question with me. Thanks to a particular incident, I wonder, especially now, how many of those honors truly recognized laudable effort — or whether they are the result of cash guarantees.
I didn’t use to wonder. As president of the St. Louis Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, part of my responsibility has been to assist other SPJ chapters in evaluating submissions for their annual awards, so they could avoid the appearance of currying favors from friends and colleagues. To juxtapose even more space between thought and deed, SPJ urges contest administrators to seek that assistance well away from their chapters’ membership areas. The closest chapter I assisted this year was a six-hour drive from me.
This year, my third consecutive as a judge, I volunteered to assess submissions for five different competitions — one of them national and four regional, or two more competitions than last year. Looking back, I’m sure though that one of those chapters won’t ring up my number again.
Before the explanation, a little background: Besides recognizing excellent work and stroking egos, awards contests can rake in a lot of money. Organizers often attach entry fees per submission, ranging from a few bucks to tens of dollars, ostensibly to offset administrative costs but also to generate operating funds for the chapters. For example, imagine a particular award category attracts two dozen entries. Charging $10 per entry nets a fast $240 in pocket for a chapter before even the invitations go out.
Multiply that by, say, 80 categories spread across the spectrum of print, televised and digital media, and the chapter is looking at potentially thousands of dollars to not only spend on impressive looking plaques and certificates to hand out at tony venues where food is served and fashions much nicer than office wear is de rigueur, but also bank a few bucks for other special events, scholarships and professional training.
This kind of thing is not unique to journalism; awards are handed out in much the same way across the scope of professions, each with its own rationale for assessing fees. One would think though that journalism, prominent among them, eschews guarantees of praise to go with those payments, if only to ensure the notion that its award-giving smacks of the same objectivity attempted in its news coverage.
Think again. As my award-judging obligation wound down I received an email from a contest organizer who was dismayed with my selections — not so much regarding my overall judgment as the lack thereof for a handful of categories. In other words, where I judged the entries to be wholly substandard, I left the category blank, ensuring no award.
“Perhaps I was unclear in my instructions, and for that I apologize,” the contest organizer wrote to me about a week after I made my choices. “These entrants paid the submission fee. We should show that they are getting something for their fee.”
Absent that, he continued, they may decide to not make submissions for future contests. And we need the money; the awards are central to our fundraising efforts.
I tried to shore up my position by reminding him that the five reporting categories I left blank had just one or two entries total for three potential awards — first, second, third and honorable mention — and that the entries themselves were laughably far off the award-winning mark: unenterprising, perhaps culled from batch-distributed public relations announcements and devoid of sourcing that might prove to me the reporters attempted to verify a shred of their PR content. In a couple instances, what struck me was that the florid wording of the original PR release had oozed through into the story.
Granted, I was not certain of the story origins. But after 30 years in this business, much of it spent coaxing good writing from bad, I have come to recognize patterns of writing, and that recognition is fairly bankable.
The awards organizer, perhaps immune to my argument, graciously deflected my concern.
“We appreciate your time and effort,” he wrote back. “Please send back the entries you judged for the categories in question, and we’ll have the awards committee review your decisions.”
I did as advised, and a few weeks later I checked the contest website for the results. Sure enough, there were the categories I had judged and left blank newly filled with winners in each and with carefully worded platitudes attached. The circle of this particular contest remained unbroken, no matter my noble intent.
Maybe I’m may be part of a dwindling contingent that believes awards and honors should recognize true exceptionality. The Pulitzer committee, at least, is a member of this group, charging $50 per Pulitzer-prize entry while not at the same time issuing awards like a supermarket coupon dispenser. That entry fee opens the door to contestants; it doesn’t ensure them one of the silver-and-gold medallions.
When any of us promise awards for the price of entry, no matter the profession, we cheapen not just the award but also the work it was intended to honor. The organizers for all journalism awards need to keep that in mind, lest their efforts to distribute praise and bolster funds also chip away the foundation of journalism’s credibility.
(This post first appeared in the May/June 2012 issue of Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists.)
In the mad rush by journalists to become multilingual in the language of multimedia, a few finer points can get cropped out of the picture. Key among them: nuance. Lacking this, attempts at quality journalism will seem a little less so, to journalists as well as their audiences.
For example, in print journalism, it’s crucial to know that most words have many definitions, intended and implied, and the context either way can make the difference between enlightening readers or confusing them. Radio talent understands this, too, and is adept at conveying additional meaning through pronunciation and delivery.
Meanwhile, videography incorporates both sets of nuances and brings another that’s purely visual in scope, something many seasoned journalists are wrestling with as video news-gathering rises in prominence and importance. These nuances do not come bundled with the technology, though; they are, like verbal and audio knowledge, products of wisdom acquired over years of practice and error.
Thus, while it’s one thing to know how to use video technology, it’s quite another to use it properly and effectively, to bring out a news story’s layers and colors. So, be sure to make room for nuance in video, the better to keep an audience engaged.
Among the nuances that deserve attention:
Humanity: The more complex a story, the harder it will be to explain all its facets. That’s why it’s more effective to narrow the story’s focus onto one person, one character, who embodies the issue. Pull the audience into that character’s life and explain how this one person fits inside the larger issue. People relate to people better than broad concepts or ideas. Show how the central concept or idea has affected this single character.
Personality: If you’re the one in front of the camera, do not fear the lens, as the audience will see that fear. Look directly into the lens, taking care not to read from cues or prompts. This way, the delivery looks natural, the conversation seems personal, and nothing appears scripted. Audiences also can sense that there’s a script nearby and will be just as distracted in listening to it as you are reading from it.
Energy: Don’t just talk to the lens; show energy and commitment while delivering the message. Bring all that energy to the camera if you want the audience to bring all of its attention in return. When the subject material makes this difficult, it may be easier to also attach a purpose to the delivery, such as getting the audience to laugh or cry or to have it ponder a particular point.
Brevity: Audiences give videographers just seconds to make their case, then only seconds more to explain why audience members should even care. So don’t waste the audience’s time or patience. Make the video’s main point in one shot, preferably unedited, because viewers tend to trust clear, straightforward messages to ones that are filled with edits. After that, keep the video’s maximum running time at three to five minutes. Not only does this respect the audience’s time, it reduces the potential for errors in the final product.
Clarity: Speaking of the final product, take care to include only the essential elements in any video clip. The best way to do this is edit out the beginning and end of the clip, where you’re stepping in and out of the frame. There’s a theory that leaving in the rough edges around a clip makes the end result seem more natural and inviting. But news trumps “natural” when it comes to credibility. Stick to using clean clips and resist the urge to “edit in” more than what the clip is saying.
This spring, I gave a presentation at the Society of Professional Journalists' Region 7 Conference, held this year at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, where I discussed briefly how best to implement social media in journalism. There is much more depth to the discussion than this, so consider the presentation a primer, not a guide.
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As social media use in journalism continues to grow, the scope of this discussion and the best practices that go along with it will broaden, to the point where one day may become the central theme of journalism. That's why there's no better time like the present to start the discussion in earnest, and start it with presentations like this one. I hope it helped you in some way, and I encourage input regardless.
