One Man And His Dream

There are many oppurtunities in Journalism to specialise in a particlular area. Sport, for instance, carries with it an unending stream of commentators and reporters. There are as many specialty areas in journalism as there are journalists to fill them. I’ve been dabbling in a few of them recently, blogging about varied subjects in the hope of finding one that i truly enjoy. finally, and after a lot of soul searching, i think i’ve found the one area of journalism that genuinely excites me. From now on then, i am a motoring journalist.

Now, before most of you presume that i’ve simply watched a few too many episodes of “Top Gear”, and think i know everything there is to know about cars simply by watching three middle aged men fall over a lot, then i’m afraid you are mistaken. I do, and i make no apologies for this, love Top Gear. It’s no wonder it is one of the most widely watced programmes in the known world; but, it is not my sole reason for wanting to spend most of my life on the wrong side of the speed limit. I genuinely love cars. I love everything about them. The aesthetics, the badges, and of course….the power. Nothing makes my imagination fly more than the sound of a classic V8. But before i get too hung up on the various layers of metaphor i could use to describe my petrol-fuelled passion, i should concentrate on the job for a while.

You see, motoring journalism, whilst it may not sound glamorous, can be split into two halves. For the first, you can be seen jet-setting your way across the globe, quaffing endless amounts of reasonably-priced champagne at launch parties, and power-sliding whichever creation makes it out of the garage first. For the second half however, things take a decisively poorer turn, as you can be seen hunched behind a desk in some cramped office, hurridly typing the previously-arranged word limit for the deadline. However, whilst this job is glamorous for only 50% of the time, there are still, as ever, more journalists than there are journalism jobs. Therefore, you have to stand out from the crowd, you have to be noticed. And that”s what i’ve been working on.

I have this recurring dream at night, it’s a very nice dream so i’m not complaining. I sit in a small chair, in a cramped office, staring at a small computer. But i’m not miserable at all. In fact i’m very happy indeed, because the plaque on my desk reads “Darren Moss : Top Gear Magazine.” That, for me, is the pure and simple definition of heaven. Let”s hope, that unlike most dreams, this one might someday, come true.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

If you want to see my various attempts at motoring journalism articles, head to:

http://mossonmotoring.wordpress.com

This New Fangled Technology

During the course of the past twelve weeks, i have accomplished quite a lot. I have come suspicously close to failing my law module. I have played 72 games of pool and lost every single one of them. And i have come to realise, that the BBC’s news service is a bit out dated. Now you may think that this is a bit late in the game to come to this conlcusion, Sky have been making claims of journalistic BBC-beating for years, but sadly, they too, come nowhere close to a service i found lately. A well deserved round of applause then please, for the good people of Twitter based BNO news.

Whilst their reports are somewhat limited by Twitter’s 140 character limit, their timing is by any means fantastic. For example, they had the story of the NY plane crash before either the BBC or Sky, and by quite a margin. I am in awe of their journalistic capability. They are truly living up to the mandate of journalism. Bringing honest, unbiased, and on time news to the masses. BNO news, i salute you

The first 12 weeks…

So here I am, standing on the brink of the second half of my first year as a journalist. Looking back to a mere 12 weeks ago, when I stood pale-faced and scared at the gates o university, I find it amazing to see just how far I’ve come. It is impossible to express in words just how much I’ve learned since starting the course, but needless to say it’s a huge amount. But as well as this, I’ve gained so many life lessons from my first semester. For example, I am now aware that if people see you walking down the high street with either a camera or a microphone, people will literally avoid you like the plague, the will cross the street to avoid you. Lincoln must officially be the busiest city in the world, because every person you ask for “a minute of their time” says that they have to be somewhere.

Joking aside, I asked myself a little over a year ago where I wanted to go, and what I wanted to do. Sure, I knew I wanted to be a journalist, but what sort? And why? And most importantly, how? As a person who is now at university, I can safely say that it is one of the best decisions I have ever made. I went to give a talk to the Sixth Formers at my secondary school a few weeks ago, and I gave them all one crystal clear piece of advice. If you have even the slightest inclination to go to university, do it. It will be hard work, and it will be stressful, but it will be the best time of your life.

So who knows what the next twelve weeks will bring. I have the glory of proper news days to look forward to. A mountain of assessments and assignments are piling up for me. It is guaranteed to be one hard struggle. And you know what…?

…I can’t wait.

A tribute to the rest of you

I have been a student journalist for a little over two months now, and i have to say, i am enjoying it completely. I wake up each day excited at what the day might bring, i learn so much i am pretty sure i could form an informed opinion on almost everything. And yet, its not quite what i expected.

I thought that after a few weeks at unversity the novelty of “fending for yourself” and “going it alone” would wear off, i thought by now my parents would grow tired of me clawing at the door, i thought, in short, i would fail and go home. But i haven’t, i’m still here, and whats more, i’m loving every minute. I had an epiphany a short while ago, journalism is one of those very few jobs that you enter into, because you have to. Journalism falls into that very special catergory of jobs that you do because you like it. Meet any journalist and the one thing they will not tell you is that they are doing it “for the money”. Journalists love their jobs, and i can genuinely see why. rarely in any other occupation do you get to meet such a variety of new people, do you get to travel to such far flung corners of he globe. We are not reporters, we are adventurours sailing on a sea of truth and justice.

This post may seem to some of you to have no point, but it is less my own opinion, and more a tribute to those among us who constantly, day after day, feed our yearning for news. Heres to you, the reporters of today. And hopefully, in just a few short years time, i’ll be joining you.

Ethics – The Morality Minefield

As colleagues on my course will know, we have been set a task on the subject of ethics. It sounds relatively simple, we are asked to either disagree or agree with a proposed statement, and of course this being university we must give a balanced argument. The hard part is that we are rather cruely limited to only 300 words. I could quite easily talk for three times that on the subject of ethics and morality in general, but i can see why the lecturers have limited us so much, so that we get straight to the point.

Now i’m sure that the essay will go fine and that in the end it will be one more assignment closer to my precious degree. But this whole ethics debate has really got me thinking. At one of our ethics lectures we were asked to summarise what ethics is. Most of us put down sensible answers, along the lines of “it helps us to see what is good or bad”, and we were partly right. However, the lecturer also said something very interesting, he told us that ethics cannot be looked at in terms of right or wrong, or as black or white. Rather he said, ethics is the greyer, more subjective area that we often overlook. The reasons behind our decisions, our hidden motives, our preoccupied stance with being objective and “to the point”, without bothering to look deeper, past the preliminary issues. These are all areas of the subject we call ethics. George Orwell summarised it brilliantly when he said “On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not all of the time.”

From a journalistic standpoint ethics surrounds us in every aspect of our jobs. It helps to explain why the field of journalism is so highly competitive. If you can, imagine the ladder of success standing in the middle of Fleet Street, and all the reporters fighting it out to reach the top. It also offers some reason as to why newspapers increasingly seek profits over people, and look for quantity over quality. Papers these days are so preoccupied wih profits that there is simply no space for any ethical dilemma; and of course the best bits of journalism by today’s standards, with out celebrity-obsessed culture and our health-crazed ways, is the journalism that creates dilemma, and fuels controversy.

The minefield of ethics is not easily navigated. You may be blown to pieces on an issue you thought you were safe on. The only way to safeguard yourself against ethical dilemma is to look beyond the issue, past the who, the what, and the when of a story, and more into the why, and the how. I hope i have at least provoked some interesting thoughts among readers tonight, and now that i am sufficiently warmed up on ehtics, i’m going to tackle that essay…

The Truth…..Can we handle it?

Journalism, i am regularly told, is not only the job of providing stories to the public, but stories that are integral, interesting, and above all; truthful. Truth then is one of the most important aspects of journalism, which can in itself be described as a search for the truth.

The reason i bring the issue of truthful reporting to light is that for one of my many assignments this semester we are to hand in an essay on a topic of ethical debate, and one of the points we are asked to consider is this: “Should journalists ever lie or use deceit in a story?” Now on the surface the simple answer is no, but delve a little deeper and you become entagled in a proverbial web of ethical dilemma. If journalsim is considered a search for the truth, if the means of obtaining that truth involve deceit, does that tarnish the overall product? Where does the line between a good story obtained by truthful means, and a great story obtained by deceitful means stand? How can journalists be pleased if their truthful reporting is tarnished in the final product?

These are all questions that need answering, and lord knows i’m not the person to do it. My simple point is however, how can it be considered to be both professional and ethical if the reporting does not contain 100% truth? Surely it cannot be considered as journalism, but we see such stories every day in the media. We see sensationalist articles in the tabloids, with unreliable sources, that are more the creationist dreams of an under-productive reporter than the truthful tale from a hard-working journalist. We talk a lot these days, especially in connections with the BBC about “responsible reporting” and “safeguarding the publics trust”, but how can trust be maintained when we see so many of these stories that clearly have little or no basis in fact.

I would ask the media to go back to its roots, to go back to the real journalism we so rarely see these days. To leave behind the self-obsessed celebrity cultutre and find the stories that matter. I was watching on youtube recently some of the first reports by the BBC in Afghanistan, way back from 2003. You can see the terror on the reporter’s face, but what you are getting is 100% truth, with real feeling, and real fact. This is real journalism, finding the stories that matter to the people. Leaving behind the Heat Magazine and celebrity culture, and striving for real reporting.

Now you may think that this entry has been nothing more than the musings of a one-month old journalist who still doesn’t quite understand the industry. This is simply my view, as rambling and as disjointed as it may be. I can only hope that my own work does not become stained by untruthful reporting, for as long as i can control it.

One Last Question

One of the many skills that the modern journalist must be armed with, is the skill to talk to anybody, be they the local shop assistant, or a full time criminal. However this is also the skill that seems to cause journalists the most trouble, and, as I mentioned last week, it doesn’t help that we have to carry microphones everywhere. This is why most journalists prefer the pre arranged interviews, the ones that give you time to prepare. But even then the actual business of conducting an interview seems to me to be a veritable minefield. A lecturer of mine was describing when he went to interview a lady whose son had unfortunately recently died. He described just how nervous he felt, the intense preparation he had done, and also the polite and courteous manner with which he conducted himself. This then is the main point I took away from the lecture, that unless the person you are interviewing is very rude indeed, if you are polite and professional people are usually more than willing to talk.

                                                  

But you see I am still left nonetheless a shivering wreck when I start to think about my first interview. What will I say? What will I do? What if they don’t talk? These are the questions that keep barrelling around my mind. Although as I said last week there are just some things in journalism that you just have to wait and do, and I’m almost certain this is one of them. One thing that definitely does scare me however is how the interviewee must feel when they are faced with the granddaddy of journalists, the master of the interview. How must they feel, with Paxman staring back at them? As part of our lecture the other day, which was funnily enough concerned with interviewing, we watched the famous interview between Paxman and Michael Howard. The matter was concerning whether Mr Howard threatened to overrule a colleague. But regardless of the issue, and regardless of the numerous ways the politician squirmed and slithered his way out of the question, I was amazed at the way Paxman did not budge. He just fired the same question out over, and over, again, until eventually the politician is forced to answer. You can watch the clip yourself on youtube, and I think that, like me, you can’t help but respect Jeremy Paxman. I mean, the man is a journalism god. He is my new favourite person, and I can only hope, that when I am more experienced, when I am a big shot journalist, and when I get the chance to interview some no-good politician, I’m as good as him.

The Issue of Trust

As a first year Journalism student, there is one topic that is talked about above all others, trust. This i am told is THE biggest issue facing journalists. I am told that, as a journalist, i am held in the public view in a position normally reserved for lawyers and real estate agents. The simple truth is that the public do not trust journalists, even though we provide them with a crucial service, and without journalism in some form or another the world would definately collapse. It seemed to me when the issue of trust was first mentioned that i would not encounter such occupational prejudice until i was a fully-fledged, practicing journalist, but the fact is that i have already encountered it. The other day, as part of a workshop, we were asked to go and talk to people in the town centre, in order to get used to using the Marantz Digital Recorder. A simple task, or so it sounded. Getting the public to talk to you when you are quite obviously a journalist is one of the hardest things i have ever done. Now don’t get me wrong, i am i believe very easy to talk to, were i on my own and without a microphone in my hand i’m sure i wouldn’t have come up against the difficulties i did.

Walking through the town center, microphone in hand, i felt like a social oucast. People were actually crossing the street to avoid me. The ones i could get to talk let me go as far as “i am a journalism student”, before telling me to push off. It seems strange then that without the service journalists provide the world would not function, and yet in the course of doing the job journalists come up against a proverbial wall of prejudice. How can reporters gain the trust of an untrusting public? This is a question that has been around since journalism first began. It is an argument that has raged for the past hundred years, and i’m sure that if we were to look a hundred years into the future, it would still be raging. I suppose it is simply one of those cliche’s, that in order to provide the public with the information they so readlily desire, you must be prepared for them to not trust you one little bit.

I would very much like here to propose a solution, a theory to explain the madness, but i think that there simply isn’t one. This is one of life’s great mysteries, and, if i continue down the road of the journalist, it’s just something i’m going to have to deal with.