Everyone has an opinion. Pay your dues before sharing it.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this postCraig's blog, Lead and Gold, is one of the best out there, and one of the few hold-overs from my early foray into blogging nearly four years ago. I rarely link to his posts, though, because most of the time they're way over my head. His recent post on editorials and opinion pages in college newspapers, entitled "Molly Ivins has a point" caught my attention partly because I could understand it and partly because I'm coming into agreement on this as I get
Craig quotes from Ivin's column:
I have long argued that no one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter -- nothing like interviewing all four eyewitnesses to an automobile accident and then trying to write an accurate account of what happened. Or, as author-journalist Curtis Wilkie puts it, "Unless you can cover a five-car pile-up on Route 128, you shouldn't be allowed to cover a presidential campaign."
He then adds his two cents regarding the college newspaper editorial pages:
Of course, her target is bloggers. I, OTOH, was thinking about college newspapers. They should get rid of their editorial pages.
Molly sez that it takes years of reporting experience before your opinion is worth a lick. So those student editorials are just wasted newsprint that teach the wrong lesson to budding journalists.
I wonder if Molly and the Project for Excellence in Journalism agree?
My short stint as a reporter for a county newspaper provided me with many unique experiences that changed me from the blowhard idiot opinionist of my early blog into the blowhard idiot opinionist with age-appropriate flair of this blog. I think the change in the quality of writing is noticeably less nauseating than the early blog.
I consider the times when I sat in on meetings covering hog farms and watched neighboring farmers holler at the county commission, veins popping in red faces as their mortified wives sat next to them, tugging on their sleeve, gold as far as experience is concerned. Or sitting in on city commission meetings with a bar owner hollering into my ear behind me over the sewage ordinance and expensive street project while the city commission members up front looked either constipated or took a new interest in their ball point pen - another moment of great learning. The key to those few years of experience as a small-potatos reporter being: I have to write a story, I have to listen to all sides, I have to take fast and accurate notes, I have to understand the broader concept, I have to keep my opinion out of it, I know these people and they know me and it is personal, and I have to be prepared to take the angry phone calls when the story comes out.
I think this blog has improved with age, like wine or cheese as opposed to my ever-creaking knees. Part of it was the reporting experience, knowing what it was like to go out and do interviews and research and try to pull together a story that would make the issue clear. It would be good to send college students out to small towns where their opinion isn't just that of an anonymous rabble-rouser, but a real person the public sees (and will accost, believe me) in the cafe, the grocery store and on the highway. When a person loses the protective wall of being just another talking head in a large college or city, suddenly they start to think a little more carefully of how they are going to say what they mean to say. More careful thinking is always in need.
Craig is on to something. We need less mouthy brats who think they know everything and are convinced that somehow their generation is special and unique just because Time and Newsweek, in an effort to increase subscriptions to the younger demographic, put every generation on the cover and tout how they'll change the world, and a few more thoughtful young people willing to learn less about formulating shallow opinions for this week's edition as opposed to learning how to get and report an actual story.
::Back in the day Generation X was something to be reckoned with according to the news media, a slacking wild force of change. Now we Gen-Xers eat Cheetos and blog and make car payments, wishing the stupid college kids would turn their music down. Your time is coming, that's all I have to say. You'll see.::
I would like to add to Craig's theory the following pre-requisite before college newspapers allow students to write opinion columns: first they have to sit through enough water board meetings to appreciate the finer points of getting a culvert put in on a township road, write about it, and field the calls from the farmer downstream who thought your article was slanted and ill-informed. At that point, you can start putting out your opinion for the general masses.
| tag: blogging |
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 3/30/2006 04:13:00 PM
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1 Comments:
Thanks for the link.
I was thinking of your stories about being a local reporter when i wrote the post right before the Ivins post.
It seems to me that a reporter at a small paper experiences the ultimate interactivity-- real people confront them in the real world. That is a type of fact-checking that no online fisking can match.
By 
craig, at
31/3/06 12:08
