Open House Reflection
August 13, 2007
A grandeur hangs over the crowd of almost three hundred people. New students eager; old students gather by the door, watching knowingly. They’ve been here before, just one year ago. They know what we don’t. And then a lineup of deans and guest speakers addresses the hushed crowd and we learn how this is where it all began.
Pulitzer wanted a school, a canon for journalism, perhaps a budding cornerstone of ethics to be carried into the future. Though, to my memory, ethics were not the subject. The word may not have even been mentioned.
But isn’t that the point of journalism? Aren’t ethics the border between fiction and nonfiction?
So, yes, in a sense, all of the speakers who told us of Pulitzer and his offer to pay for the school on the Columbia campus, and yes the school turned down the offer for perhaps a dozen years. And then it was built and inside were trained the first of many generations of journalists. And it was good. And now we were here, a scant hallway from the room in which the Pulitzer Prizes are decided and it is now good because we have been chosen.
From the start of the application process there has been a thread of, hey baby, we’re Columbia and we’re #1. Oddly though, it’s always been accompanied by an air of self deprecation, as if the firmament of the journalistic ethos is still the writer and the urge to tell a story. And in that, I felt, from the start, despite some notable logistical issues that I’d more easily associated with municipal systems, rather at home. Here was a place where story is king, where everything is a mendicant in the Garden of Telling. We, no matter how formative our gestation in these ivy halls, were still just storytellers, ancient in profession, the very base of civilization. The story, our singular purpose.
The audience seemed a bit white. Stark contrast from CUNY, the open house of which was like a cross section of NYC, with a veritable rainbow of representation. The Columbia open house was rather light, many out-of-staters, not as much of a black, Hispanic or Asian representation.
Then again, my eyes aren’t the best and clearly my own predilections towards judging situations through a racial lens are implicated more strongly than Columbia’s entrance policies. That, and not every student attending would be at the open house. But there’s a value in observing the various peoples who come together for any occasion, and the anthropologist in me tried to see just what my cohort would be. Still awaiting that dreadful and exciting first day, I can’t say. I’m currently of the mind that while CUNY is aiming for comprehensive urban reportage, Columbia seems to approach journalism more broadly, with the majority of students coming from out of state and even out of country.
Honestly, as much as I was impressed with CUNY, and would not hesitate should the future bring a moment to work closely with a CUNY graduate, Columbia’s wide scope appeals more to my romantic side. Perhaps the opportunity to meet and cavort with Africans and Asians and Europeans and everyone else from everywhere will open doors to things beyond imagination. I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I chose Columbia: It’s unknown. It’s scary. It’s expecting me to live up to some kind of potential about which I’m not necessarily aware. I have no idea what’s going to happen in the next few days.
But I’ll be here, every night, sleeping or awake, frigid or feisty, sober or drunk.
Nothing Is True, Everything is Permitted
August 14, 2007
It’s the ethics that define journalism, isn’t it? The difference between telling a story and telling the truth is that trust gained by the transparency of the journalistic technique, that here one has delved into many records and minds of witnesses, victims, perpetrators, tourists; that here no lies are told for they’ll quickly disperse in the gusty investigation of truth and honor and journalistic integrity. So, then, does a blog account for this kind of truth? And what is truth?
Remember the Old Man of the Mountain, Hassan i. Sabbah. I’ve been remembering his dying words. Where is the truth within? How can this be true? I am writing in the space provided by one media outlet - a non-profit - and writing about my experience at the media machine, Columbia Journalism, the best known, most respected, putatively finest graduate journalism school in the country, perhaps the world. So will I not politic? Am I not skewed from the beginning, navigating tricky shoals of politics while adhering to the hopes of my publisher who no doubt wishes to shine a light into the very genesis of the journalistic ethos, that thing that makes journalism accountable for its crimes?
But there is no truth, is there, Master of Assassins? Sabbah said, “Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”
I still can’t say what it means. I think, like “journalism,” this dying sentiment means what our experience tells us it means. And this leads me to my next question: Is anything reported in the news actually “true?” Is al Qaeda a terror group or freedom fighters? As a young Jew I learned of the Maccabees, the warriors hailed at Chanukah as the freedom fighters of the besieged Jewish homeland, who defeated the Romans with guerilla tactics and retook the holy temple only to find a small bit of miraculous oil which burned bright for the eight days. Were the Maccabees terrorists to the Romans, who were simply extending the tentacular reach of their empire? What’s in this name, “terrorist.” Or any other term, phrase, or sentiment issued by the grand keepers of knowledge, the bestowed institutes of fact, the journalistic machine known as the mass media.
Everything you read, hear, and see has been approved for your viewing. Everything has been allowed to pass the myriad levels of editorial approval. Everything has been signed off upon. Everything has been permitted. But none of it is true because there is no truth, there is only what is. So in two days I embark upon this yearlong journey through annals of knowledge production and I warn you now, that nothing I ever write, in any publication, in any place will be true because there is not, and never has been, and never will be, anything true about the truth. And so I beseech you to never take the word, never believe the article or the clip or the radio. The only truth you can know is your own. Everything else has simply been arranged for your various pleasures.
Reporting & Writing, Meat & Bones
September 4, 2007
Two producers, Alice Pifer and Arlene Morgan, from ABC’s 20/20 were in this week to lecture about some sensitive racial pieces they produced for TV broadcast. Well, I shouldn’t so much say lecture, as ‘make themselves available.’ We watched about ten minutes of a piece called “The Family Secret,” a feature on a woman who’d recently found out that she had black ancestors. The piece seemed to me a typical vanilla primetime journalism piece intended for a wide audience, showing a very light, yet thorough, investigation, much of which appeared to source directly from the woman featured, Jill Atkin Sim.
The morning quickly dissolved from there. In the Q&A, students raised their hands, took the mic, and spoke, one after the other, about the implicit racial prejudices evinced in a potpourri of ways by the white producers. Interestingly, the feature was accompanied by an interview of Alice and TV journalist Lynn Sherr, examining how they came about the story and how it was produced. Issues of race were discussed in the interview, which is available with the feature on the DVD “The Authentic Voice.”Anyway, back to the students: they came crashing down on the hapless presenters. Everything they did was wrong in a thousand ways.
I wondered how they all missed the fact that, during the interview, Pifer said that she avoided using hate speech in her pieces. This was in a response to a question about Jill Atkin Sim’s statement that when she found out she had black ancestry, she hated white people.
Now, I don’t think this qualifies as hate speech. Transiently hating something is not the same as developing a vernacular of hate against a particular group for an extended period of time. Hell, I hate various groups of people ten to twenty times a day: teenagers, cabbies, ladies at the market with gigantic, aisle-blocking tushies, and the list goes on. Don’t laugh, at one time or another, you’re on that list too. (I’m on there at least twice a week).
Second, and more germane, how in the hell does a journalist decide what is hate speech and whether or not it should be put into a story. Are the lunatics running the asylum? Since when do journalists engage in censorship?
I might have had the opportunity to ask this question, but instead I shied away from the fray and watched as Meg, my classmate in RWI [what is RWI?], stand and address the crowd with a bold, yet tactful, argument against the indignant repetitions of the crowd. At this point, let me say that each and every rebuke of the Family Secret producers was intelligent and well thought-out. The problem was that they tend to sound less so when one has heard them for the fourth, fifth, tenth time. Truly, the intelligent arguers missed one critical point: this is journalism school, not a literary criticism course; critique of the journalistic content should have given way sooner or later to a critique of the format.
When I left the lecture to attend a seminar in RWI, I was pretty pissed. The school said they usually give this presentation in January, but this year thought it would work at the beginning of the year. I don’t think it worked out that way. Clearly, more time under our belts as journalists would have facilitated a more efficient use of our time with these two journalism professionals. And perhaps I would have asked one of those questions that I soon regretted not asking.
Seagull Guano Blues
September 5, 2007
Labor Day was weird. Like the dull silence before the deluge. Classes begin in their full glory next week. Our second story assignment is to be “pitched” to our RWI professors tomorrow (Thursday, the 6th). This is the genesis of a sellable story, and a necessary function of anybody seeking to write for money. I spent this morning on my beat, The Rockaways, Queens. Rockaway, the word a corruption of the Lenape Indian word for something like “land of our people” or some such translation. Click here to get the Wiki on it. I met with the Rockaway Artists Alliance, an education and outreach group doing all sorts of good things for the community. They run art gallery openings, kids’ activities, public lectures, and more. What did I find? I found too many people in too small a space working too hard to satisfy the cultural needs of a vibrant artistic community.
The Rock, as I call the peninsula, which juts westward off the south shore of Long Island, extends to just south of Coney Island. It is an odd place, and I say this in full awareness of just how odd the rest of NYC can be. The Rock is one of those areas where gentrification and development are clashing in a violence of land grabbing, resulting in the patchwork ‘hoods of expensive homes and run down shacks often separated by a matter of a block. The difference is staggering. Last week I made a left off a bumpy city street crammed with small, run down businesses and a dingy looking medical clinic, onto a wealthy street populated by religion Jewish families. Just in the turn of a corner, the world changes. We will receive training on how to approach topics like race and ethnicity. New York City is a veritable laboratory of race studies. How does a white Jew from Long Island go into a black community and report with a keen and accurate eye? There is no easy answer. But the Process, capital P, at Columba doesn’t seek to tamp down our biases. Rather, the Process allows for them, makes us approach them, question them, acknowledge them.
The journalist is a human, and is not expected to be anything less emotional or less opinionated. Rather, in the short time I’ve been at the school, it has been represented to me that we try to put our judgments in our back pocket, so to speak, while we are out on the beat. Listen to what people have to say, see what is being shown, experience it all with every inch of sense. (My editor wrote here: [But that’s easier said than done . . . HOW do you do it especially in a place like the Rock?] And I say, this is precisely what they DON’T tell you! I found myself struggling on the sidewalk, utterly dejected, yes! That’s the word, dejected. Humanity turned away from me, the people refused to speak. And just when I was at my most desperate, when it seemed that everyone wanted me to go away, I asked one more person, just one. I don’t even remember what I said. But she talked. And talked. Man, did she talk and it tasted like fresh water after an eternity in the desert. I was overjoyed, and reinvigorated. And I went into a Nursing Home and lo and behold the desk clerk wanted to talk to me. Three hours later I had six real sources and thirty rejections. But I had those six. And I was still alive. When it’s all over, when shadows fall upon the mountain, we go home and unpack what we’ve seen, heard, smelled, tasted. Parse it out, put it into 3-D space and see how it all relates and then the story resolves.
Eared Grebe Waddling
September 10, 2007
The pedagogy at the J-School is directed towards personal development rather than rote. There is no firm direction, like “do this” and “do that.” Rather, the focus is on the negative space, the borders of appropriate journalistic practices, ethical behavior and accurate writing. We had a lecture the other week, delivered by Dean Klatell, who spoke of developing a story source as a dance of seduction and betrayal. Do we seduce our sources with our fascination in them, and then betray them as we tell all their secrets in our text? The question was ultimately left unanswered. This is the essence of our education. We are positioned in front of these questions, ethical questions that strike at the heart of our personal morals. And then we are left alone with the ways to answer. For each, the process is different, and the result is a necessary discovery of how we, as people, as journalists, must live with ourselves and the choices we make.
I am finding my way firsthand. Covering the BioBlitz at Jamaica Bay this weekend (Sept. 7-8), I was, for the first time, a member of the press at a public event, and through the 24-hour period, I had to find that niche within which I could be myself, represent myself as a writer, and gather the information from sources that ultimately will be the meat of my story.
It wasn’t easy. Scientists are wary of press. Most science journalism, in my opinion, sucks BEANS Science journalism routinely looks for the controversy, for the binary oppositions, for the dramatic perspective that finds its home in the human heart. But nature is not so parochial. Science is nothing more than observation. When in nature, or what we call nature, there are no binary answers, no right and wrongs, no perfect tragedies or comedies. As I watched an Eared Grebe dip under the waters of the East Pond in Jamaica Bay, the birders with whom I observed, explained that this fellow was far outside his natural migratory pattern. Searching for the tension, I asked, is this due to the human presence? No, he answered. This was a normal occurrence, the frequent anomaly present in nature, which befuddles man’s attempt at breaking down the world into comprehensible bits. It could be the fringe of a new migration, a mistake by a young bird, or some other sort of entropic occurrence. But there was no reason to suspect human activity as the source of this small bird’s wrong turn.
Later, in a conversation bordered by the cars rushing along Cross Bay Boulevard, we spoke about journalists and science writing. He recalled being quoted with such telescopic ferocity, that controversy was made from statements that neither represented his scientific view, nor the functional truth. This was a recognition of precisely the science writing I will not engage in. Of this, I assured him.
The drama of nature and science is too magnificent to be framed in the petty diatribes of a myopic perspective. As I piece through my notes and set up interviews for an in-depth look at this event, I am finding my way through this personal maze, coming to understand how I must be, in the most existential of senses, a writer in the world. And in this way, I’m coming to appreciate the school’s focus on developing the person rather than just developing a generic body of knowledge.
Unfinished business
September 16, 2007
This is how the schedule breaks down. Monday and Tuesday are reporting days, and belong to the class, RWI, which is Reporting and Writing I. This course holds the majority of credits and represents the most intense workload for the first semester. It takes at least three days a week, two days for reporting on the beat, and one day in class.
Of course, because “reportage” means anything from going out on the street to see, smell, hear, touch and taste the beat, to home research, phone calls, visits to other resources, tracking down sources, and more, this course actually takes my weekends as well. Then, Wednesday is class all day, with a seminar, which is basically a workshop, and a drill, which is a two hour writing session where we learn, under some sort of pressure, how to write quick and proper according to AP style, which is how the Associated Press defines how it’s done through an annual publication. Many of the aspects of AP style have been determined historically by the constraints of the analog news wire. For example, not spacing in between an initialled name, i.e. W.C. Fields instead of W. C. Fields. And they do this because they do not want a name separated between lines as it is transferred over the wire. Functional grammar.
Thursday is my feature writing class. It has not yet begun.
Friday begins EARLY, with law, precisely the class to lull one back to the fluffy pillows of sleepytime. I pulled myself back into consciousness several times during this lecture. But watch out! They know where everyone is seated, and they call you out just like in law school.
Next on Friday is Critical Issues, the closest thing to an ethics course that we have. In CI, we discuss the history and current ethos of journalism. So far, nothing concrete has been said. Rather everything has been left up to us to discern. No easy answers. No finite quantities. No firm borders, besides the obvious (like inaccuracy, plagiarism, et. al. All things that get one fired from a journalism job, or kicked out of school).
Finally, on Friday, I meet with my master’s project advisor. Deadlines are set up throughout this semester for this monster piece of writing. In two months from now, I need my project topic approval. After that, it gets crazy. Deadlines hot and fast. Source lists, notes, outlines, complete reporting (from all sources) before the winter break. And then we write. And submit. And write again.
And still, my Skills course has not yet begun. (New Media. There, I think I’ll be learning how to work with Flash).
So that’s it. That’s semester 1 at Columbia. I can tell you now, with the work expected in RWI, that single course would fill any normal semester. I’m beginning to appreciate how this can work as a one year master’s program. Whether I maintain my sanity is still in question.
Walk in the Park
September 17, 2007
Morning finds me walking down the slim paths of Prospect Park, where the trees tower above and the pastures are verdant and everlasting. I am here to cover an event outlined in the AP Day Book, a daily posting of events by the Associated Press, with basic information regarding the event, like a contact phone number. In my case, I was covering the ceremony for graduates of the Urban Park Service Academy, an 8-10 week program taking place on Randall’s Island (underneath the Triboro Bridge for those unfamiliar), involving physical and civic training. These guys are basically cops for parks, making decent scratch for a civil job and working at some of the more pleasant areas of the city.I got there early, which saved my ass. Milling around before the ceremony were several recent grads of the park patrol, the law enforcement side of the park service. (The other division consists of rangers, who do more outreach and education about nature. Both divisions have law enforcement powers.) Getting quotes from bona fide sources, including full name and some type of contact information, is tremendously important to reporting. So when the ceremony lasted longer than I expected, I had my quotes and notes in my book already.
The interview process is one of the hardest things I do. What questions do I ask? What tone of language do I use? I’m not one of those investigative types. I want to be told what wants to be told. I’m not the type to run after the subject, waving a mic, quoting constitutional provisions. So I move in gently, sidle up, engage a light conversation. I identify myself as press. Some people are totally shy. Some want to buy you lunch.
I sat down with Aisha, a young, pretty, girl with dark skin, dark eyes, and hair dreaded out a bit. She ushered her friend, Rashid, over to us and we sat and talked. Well, Aisha and I sat. Rashid stood. I asked a lot of dumb questions, like how she came to be in the park service, what she did before this, how was training camp, what’s the most interesting thing you’ve seen? Not the most creative fare, on my part.
One man, older than these two, had been a corrections officer at Sing Sing prison. I didn’t follow up. I thought the story had to adhere to the Day Book event. The lesson here was plain, after the fact. The story is always there, waiting to be found. But it may not be the story you seek. It may be hiding in a shadow, behind a door, inside someone’s head. It must be recognized in its camouflage and teased from hiding. It has to be caressed and tenderly undressed until it is finally, fully exposed. This is the kind of lesson learned by utter and complete failure in the field.
Deadline was 4pm. I got to school at 2:30 and started writing. And that’s a whole other process.
To Be Continued…
Ahmadinejad is coming
As for the second part of the previous post, my professor/editor yawned at the first draft, so I went back and wrote a sarcastic version of the coverage of the graduation ceremony for the N. Y. Urban Park Service. In this one, squirrel fiends hunted for nuts until the hero-park ranger, clad in a green cape and utility belt, flew in. But I had to balance this with the fact that these guys are law enforcement and were a big presence on Sepember 11, 2001, so respect was to be paid as well.
It’s tough, this kind of writing. You have to satisfy many sources with accurate reporting. Then add a gossamer layer of perspective. Bake for thirty minutes. Cut to shreds with a red pen and start all over again.
My Man Mahmoud
September 24, 2007
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Protests are like carnivals without the fried food. Festivities of theoretical argument perfume air with the smell of heated exhalations. Today at Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus, the lawns were plush from last night’s rain. The sky was a crystal dome and the sun shone like God’s unblinking eye. And in that glorious bowl, the stone columns of libraries rose like ancient Athens returned from the dust.
By noon the protest had organized on the steps of the Low Memorial Library. The school was nearly invisible during this. Some campus patrol, no NYPD inside the gates as far as I could tell, and cleanup crews later in the day. The rest of it seemed to put itself together - a deft sleight of organizational hand.
Protests are multicolored, like candystores. Posters in vibrant yellow and orange - but rather sloppy text - bounced along on people sticks. If you had a camera, they stopped moving, bouncing up and down in place until the click of the shutter. One sign read, don’t bring a liar to a place of truth. I’m paraphrasing. I thought it was curious that a university, a place that arguably produces a truth, was posited as a place for someone foreign (to the university population, not nationally foreign) to avoid expressing views. What is a university if not universal?
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Even the universe has limits. A massive python of protesters wriggled down Broadway. I watched from the men’s room window. The men’s room has a particularly good view of the 116th Street entrance with Broadway as the backdrop. On this beautiful day, thousands came out to chant in unison.
In the journalism building, the ‘working’ -read real - press took over the lecture hall. Students were in the World Room. He came, we watched, we wrote. It was on TV.
I turned in an A.P. style story at five minutes to 5 p.m. It was narrow. I could have expanded the scope. I could have questioned the method of the event, the event itself. I could have turned the critical eye at Columbia. That kind of work is appreciated around here. Columbia, for all it’s reputation, seems not to have fear of internal dissent. In fact, at this moment, I’m tempted to say the University thrives on rebellion.
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Instead I focused narrowly. I automatically had Mahmoud as the main character, and, I admit, cast him as the adversary. Perhaps conveying him as an adversary was not the error, though. Perhaps I should not have considered him the only adversary.
Just More Questions
October 2, 2007
I’ve got mixed feelings.It’s too short. Nine and a half months for this program. I want more time to synch the theory of our lectures with the real world of reporting.
It can’t be any longer. I wouldn’t want to have two years of this kind of slapdash schedule.
My keyboard misses letters; I’m developing a nasty case of carpal tunnel radial nerve compression; my golf game is going to hell.
And on top of all of this, a slowly congealing sense of place in the free fall of story-finding and reporting. There’s a subtle confidence-of-job that seems to develop. I’m increasingly willing to jump fences, park illegally, and approach certain people becuase I’m working as a journalist and that gives me some sort of mandate. I can’t compel answers, but I can, at least, ask the questions.
It’s a constant challenge though. Tomorrow we go to supreme court, and this newfound confidence (let’s call it “j-balls”) will face a new test. I don’t have a clue what to expect. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I have questions now too. Like the ’seduction and betrayal’ of interviewees. This is a real test of personal ethics, and a common part of everyday journalism.
To toss out some basic ideas: the story is not written before the interview; the interview informs the story; the story written in the end may be entirely different than the story in its infancy.
(These aren’t canonized dictates of the J-School. This is just how I make it through the day.)
The result of all this is a necessary seduction of the subject, and a subsequent betrayal. Here’s a well-thought out example: I approach a possible story subject. It could be anyone. Let’s say a park ranger. And I say, “Hello, I’m ________ and I’m writing a story for ____________. I’m interested in squirrel-on-squirrel violence. Can you give me a few minutes of your time?”
And s/he says ok.
In the course of conversation, the ranger lets on that there may be a department-wide scandal involving stolen squirrel nuts.
So now i’ve got a lead into a whole new story, a scandal in fact, which may ultimately cost my subject his job and more.
But do I hesitate to investigate and write the story?
Hell no! If the information is of significant public value, I go ahead with the story.
Of course, this leads one to ponder, Who decides what constitutes significant public value? Aha! Dean David Klatell might say. Klatell teaches Critical Issues, the closest thing we have to an ethics course. And he’s a witty and fun lecturer with plenty of atitude and a stylish oration. But for all his sardonic remarks and good humor, Klatell would not supply the answer. He’s said as much in lecture. The question of what is significant and what isn’t, and the core ethical questions for each and every journalist, is nothing that can be held to the canon. It is a singular decision, made on each story, every time a writer, or radio broadcaster, or television reporter goes out on assignment. And we have to live with our decisions. This appears to be the heart of it: a group of disparate individuals, each with their own ideas about how to move through the process, each acting in dissonant concert with the whole to produce some type of un-defineable body of knowledge categorizin and classifying itself in the endless attemp to tell some sort of truth.