Ms. Smith was very animated, and painted a seemingly honest picture of journalism work in DC. She's a regional reporter, which means that she takes the national news and picks it apart to find something relevant to her hometown. Her stories, therefore, cover areas that very few people touch upon, because essentially, very few people are from Fort Wayne.
I thought it sounded tough, though, to take every large story and have to find something minor that applies to a niche audience. It seems to me like that would require a fair amount of investigative journalism.
For example: When former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens recently died in a plane crash, Ms. Smith took the story, did some investigating, and found out that he had actually been raised in Indiana. So, unlike other reporters, she didn't simply relay the facts, but instead delved beneath the surface to find an additional aspect that a lot of journalists didn't. So, although "small town" sort of denotes, "simplistic", here that doesn't really seem to be the case.
She also made a really interesting point when talking about things she's learned in DC. She said that she had never realized how committed people like House Representatives were to their jobs. I guess I never really thought of it this way, but she said that she couldn't imagine having to fight for her job against a worthy opponent every 2 years - and it's true, that would be incredibly stressful for anyone.
Another bit of interesting info she added was that the journalists in the best positions right now are those that have a specialty, because they have a knowledge of a niche area that's hard to replace. That's great news for me, as I've decided to pursue a journalistic focus in fantasy films - LOTR, Hpitty, Narnia, ...etc
Kidding.
Anyhow, I'll sum up this posterooni with my fav quote of the entire seminar
... "We get in this business because we like people, or because we hate people."
 |
| Sylvia (in the zebra print), with students in the Journalism class |
No comments:
Post a Comment