Specialized Reporting Blog 1 - 5/29

To appropriate a line from my favorite movie, as far back a I can remember I wanted to be a writer. My first great love was reading (I was into chapter books well before my peers - we're talking kindergarten/firt grade here), and I suppose the desire to write my own just sort of followed suit.

While journalism is not always ideal to allow a writer to flex his imagination, the search for details, the construction of the big picture, and the construction of a narrative does somewhat serve to scratch that writer's itch.

I have also noticed, as I've grown more cogniscient of goings-on in the world around me, that we are at a critical point in journalistic history. The new media pathways the digital age has opened brought exciting new opportunities and reporting methods, but also seem to have challenged and shook journalism's core values. Recent years have brought advertisments masquerading as news articles, subjective thinkpieces masquerading as objective reporting, and sensationalist headlines designed to generate views/clicks/controversy. Personally, I have long since given up on the veracity of 24-hour news networks, and view them with the same careful skepticism that I lend to organizations that make prominent use of the words "Liberty" or "Family" in their name.

To me, journalism is first and foremost about informing for the sake of accountability. The public must be informed about the actions of their elected representatives and the kinds of laws they pass, about the actions of the businesses they support, about injustices against their fellow citizens, and more, that those people in question might be held accountable for their actions.

I have no illusions that I'll be the reporter to break the next Watergate scandal my first year out of college, or even ever, but aspirations can't hurt.