2012: The Apocalypse and the final year of journalism
by: Mike Brannen
Well folks, centuries of journalism has taken us to 2012, and according to the Mayans, we’ve got about 11 months left. You would think given the long existence of our profession, we’d get everything right by this point. We aren’t close. So, we could throw in the towel for the last year, crawl into a bottle, and let the AP do everything for us. But, I don’t like hangovers, I always have to rewrite what the AP says anyway for TV, and being at my first job, I can only afford one towel.
Since no one likes a smelly journalist, here are some things we can work on together to make our field shine like Mayan gold for at least a few months.
Allow stories the length it deserves
TV people, I’m looking at you. An unfortunate consequence of packing in as many stories as possible in a newscast is words and sentences get trimmed. Key contextual facts get left out. SPJ Generation J blogger Jacqueline Ingles mentioned this in her last post, and talked about the importance of telling the whole story.
Journalists and consultants like to claim the nation’s attention span is getting shorter. It’s not shorter, there are just more distractions, Our reports are just not interesting enough to keep people around. Let’s provide the whole story and make it meaningful.
Avoid the word “gubernatorial”
Just stop it. Please. Only journalists use this word. I know it will be tough in this campaign year, but do your best to lose it from your vocabulary.
Also, no more use of the following: brandished, fatal, struck, and fighting for their life. Normal people don’t say these words conversationally.
Dig up more meaningful investigations
I don’t believe we’ve run out of great investigative stories uncovering fraud, conspiracies, and criminal activity. With technology allowing us to access more information, it seems easier to track down the bad guys and their wrongdoings. Imagine how much faster Woodward and Bernstein would have broken their powerful Watergate investigation with the tools we have today. I think we get too wrapped up in “scandals” like Congressman Anthony Weiner’s Twitter fiasco, or Schwarzenegger’s unfaithfulness.
Leave those to TMZ or the bloggers. Let’s get our muckrakers back to work.
Read The Elements of Style (again)
Make your writing tighter and stronger. This book made me write better. Adopt the mantra “every word matters.” See how often you could lose “very” or an adverb.
Get rid of the “kicker”
For non-TV people, this is the :30 video clip at the end of a newscast that’s supposed to make the viewer feel warm and cozy. It’s the video of the world’s largest cheescake, the potato sack marathon, or the dog that can drive a car. Whatever. It’s not news, it’s wasting our audience’s time, and there’s a thing called that Internet that has millions of these videos. Zero journalistic value.
Get more voices
Our job is to talk to the public, get their opinions, and draw a conclusion on what is the general consensus on a topic. The easy part is reaching the conclusion. The hard part is getting meaningful voices. The more voices, the more diverse perspectives one can learn from. People relate to others and their stories. No one sympathizes with the writer. They are only moved based on what happens to the characters.
We have access to an abundance of stories on the Internet, and based on those, we can draw a conclusion on the public’s attitude. But, there is no substitute for human observation, instinct and interpretation of perceptual cues. Go out and meet your voices face to face, and share that with your audience.
The time to improve starts now. Why wait to make yourself and your profession better? Even if the Mayans are wrong, you will be a better journalist when 2013 starts.
Mike Brannen is a morning newscast producer for KIRO7, the CBS affiliate in Seattle. He finished his thesis Motivational Use of Twitter in 2010, and received an MA from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He received his Bachelor of Journalism degree the year before. Previous to Seattle, he worked multiple positions at KOMU-TV in Columbia, Missouri for four years. He shares more about his life at mikebrannen.com and on Twitter: @MikeBrannen.
Tags: advice, broadcast news, career, Careers, ethics, Gen J, Gen Jers, generation j, journalism, journalism ethics, journalist, journalists, Mike Brannen, newsrooms, reputation, Society of Professional Journalists, young journalists