Thoughts on the readings

Chapter 1 of News Reporting and Writing writes that the newest form of journalism is based on two main points:

1) Democracy isn’t working as well as it should
2) Journalists have a responsibility to do something about that.

Traditional journalists, the book writes, would believe that simply because public life does not work well, dose not mean that it is our responsibility to make it work. It adds that traditional journalists would find this kind of thinking to be dangerous.

Truthfully, I think that the idea that journalists have a responsibility to fix democracy is crazy. We have a responsibility to report the news. We tell the public what is happening, and we do so in an unbiased fashion.


Chapter 2 describes the layout of a typical newsroom. The chapter also talks about the changing nature of reporting. One of the most fascinating changes I have seen in the newsroom is the addition of the citizen journalists, a non staff writer who is used by mid-sized newspapers to cover town events.
I have put al of thought into the reality of citizen journalists and decided that in years to come, a restructuring of the newsroom may be needed. There would, in fact, be another tier added to the newsroom (editor-in-chief, section editors, reporters, citizen journalists). More copy editors would be needed to deal with style issues from the citizen pieces, possibly one for each section. Staff reporters in the newsroom should also be expected to assist in editing, with citizen writers reporting to a staff journalist. For example, each town in the newspaper’s area could have one reporter assigned to it who would oversea all of the citizen reporters from that area. Their job would be to cover the town’s main events and to help assist the citizen journalists on their pieces, doing the first edits.


From the interviewing tips section of Chapter 3, I was reminded that I really need to work on keeping my questions short and concise. I tend to ramble too long in my questions to make sure that I have gotten the point across right.

My favorite interview technique is to simply act like I don’t know what I'm talk about. I find that a lot of people are much more willing to tell me everything about what they do if I act like I don’t know, and am very interested. It works especially well for profile pieces. Obviously, for hard news, you need the person to know that you’re not gullible. But I do find that a little bit of naivety goes a long way.