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We, the media.
This weekend I welcomed the opportunity to debrief, discuss, and deconstruct the ways that media outlets have covered our communities. My fellow workshoppers came from organizations ranging from a local Chicago neighborhood newspaper to public radio in Minnesota to a journalism school in Nebraska to a newsletter startup in Seattle. And we all know: it’s time for change. There have been countless articles attempting to pull apart the dry results of the election and the way we, the media, failed. We failed to talk to everyone that mattered—which is everyone. We wrote off groups that we felt had already been represented. In trying to listen to some groups better than we had in the past, we forgot about others. In the media industry today, this is a particularly remarkable challenge when you’re already squeezing pennies and writing for clicks. But this is not an acceptable excuse. No excuse is acceptable. Journalists tend to like to talk. When you’re interviewing someone, you’re trying to get to know them and make them feel comfortable chatting with you. And we like to be heard. We use our platforms to share the words that we write and, sometimes, the opinions that we hold. We value our authority in our audiences. We haven’t been listening. That’s why the timing of the Poynter Institute’s “Building an Engaged Newsroom” conference worked out so perfectly. I and 29 other journalists spent a day and a half plunging into discussions about community engagement, audience construction, and the role of the news media in our lives. We’re learning to associate ourselves with the audience and our community now, rather than outside of them. We, the media, are guilty. But we’re also energized for this change. We’re ready to get to work. Note: As the only student participating in the institute, I was the only person unattached to a formal news organization. Stay tuned for some news on that coming in the coming weeks. Election Day means different things for different people. All of us Americans have been barraged by campaign ads and social media posts and more, but not all of us journalists will choose to vote. After reading a column about how the writer does not vote for the sake of journalistic integrity, I was curious about what my peers in the journalism world thought about voting as a reporter. Here's what the columnist, James Ragland of the Dallas Morning News, had to say: I'm neutral — an old-school holdout who still cherishes the romantic ideal of journalists as objective purveyors of truth. That objectivity is just as important to me today as it was when I first signed up for this gig nearly 32 years ago. ... A number of journalists on my social media channels have been sharing pictures of their own civic participation. I've also heard about national reporters who opt out of voting to avoid conflicts of interest; Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper include themselves in this group as well as Ragland.
But I haven't heard about this from my Millennial peers. Arguably, no age group is more highly courted to #GOTV (that's get out the vote, for the un-hashtagged) than us collegiate voters. What do they have to say for themselves? Several journalists and a handful of readers responded to my informal Facebook survey. Here's a smattering of their answers:
As for me, I haven't missed voting in an election since I turned 18 and registered to vote. I respect the decisions of journalists who omit submitting their own ballot, but downballot races are incredibly important. As a student journalist, there's this awkward space of not wanting to show objectivity or political bias but there is a separation between the work I'm doing right now and potential work I could in national political reporting. And at least I'm not donating to candidates and contributing to the hyperbole of the biased mainstream media. Plus, I would feel like a hypocrite harping on people to vote without having marked up my own ballot. So if you have a "I Voted" sticker or bracelet from this campaign cycle or not, godspeed and good luck to everyone on the campaign trail or in the newsroom in this final stretch. |
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