Fits of Journalistic Nostalgia

A conversation with a pal brought up this story, about the first interview I ever did. I was in eighth grade, and it was for the school paper. I cannot for the life of me remember the teacher's name, but I remember I was assigned the story because she was new to the school, and had been teaching at a consulate school and then a local school in Mexico. In the course of the interview, I remember asking her about culture shock, and she told me the story about their little dog, Pepe, who they had adopted after moving there. They had a housekeeper, and occasionally her mother would come and make them fresh tamales. In the area they lived in, fresh meat was so scarce that the local butcher would run up a red flag when he had some. So they, uh, ate what meat was available. One night, the teacher came home to a big, steaming pile of tamales. She ate several, and then began calling for Pepe...to no avail. I think you know where that was headed. I told the whole story in my piece, and it was, I suppose, the first hard-hitting expose I did - on the dog-eating science teacher. So what was your first interview?

Good Teachers, Good Schools

On the day after we hear about this ginormous shortfall in the DISD budget that nobody knew about until now, there's bound to be more naysayers about the district. It's sad that a few career bureaucrats managed to screw up so badly, again, at the expense of thousands of children who depend on them. That being said, I thought I'd go all warm and fuzzy by talking about great teachers and schools. After all, it's not teachers balancing this budget - and maybe it would be different if they did. After all, teachers don't make much for the enormous service they provide, and must be masters at crafting a livelihood out of that pay. So this thread is not for diatribes about DISD, or public schools, or anything else. I just want to know this: What teacher had the most impact on your life? How? I'll start. Although Mrs. Kaundart and Ms. Hays were my journalism teachers in junior high and high school, respectively, the teacher that had the most to do with what I do for a living is Mrs. Kropinicki, my fourth grade English teacher at Converse Elementary. She had us write for public consumption - my first taste of such a thing. As a fourth grader, it is no small thing to have something you've written read aloud to your classmates. You're risking social suicide if it is bad or worse - lame. But one day, the assignment was to write a short story. Mine was about a boy who hated broccoli, and when his mother wasn't looking, sneakily tossed his in the garbage. But the broccoli came back to haunt him, showing up at his desk while he did his homework, his bathroom sink while he brushed his teeth, on his pillow as he tried to sleep, mocking him and chatting with him about why the boy threw him away. I turned my assignment in the next day. The day after, Mrs. Kropinicki handed them back - every short story but mine. Mine, she said, would be read aloud to the class. I felt like vomiting. Or dying. Or vomiting and dying. But as she read it, an amazing thing happened. My classmates laughed in all the right places. My humorous short story had the entire class laughing loudly, and this rush came over me. I was hooked. This - writing well enough to connect with people, to evoke some kind of emotion - was what I wanted to do. Forever. So thanks, Mrs. Kropinicki. While later teachers helped me hone my craft, you helped me find it.

One Last Swipe at the Constitution

Even if you're not a journalist, this should bother you. I'll explain why later, in a more detailed post, but feel free to comment now.

Can I Have Four Beers?

Over on Poynter Online, Amy Gahran talks about Leonard Witt's question on PJNet, which was evidently sparked by a discussion panel. I'm pretty sure that by linking to Amy's post that links to Leonard's post which is essentially from another discussion, I'm going to unleash some journalistic seventh circle of hell, but here goes. Witt's question?

"Here, I believe, is the ultimate ethical question: If the American public does not want to pay for journalism -- in other words, doesn't find value in what we as journalists do -- should we simply stop doing it?"

Gahran and I pretty much agree - this question operates under the fallacy that subscribers (aka, the public) pay for their journalism. Advertisers pay for the production of the newspaper - the subscriptions just barely pay for the costs to deliver the product. True, without subscribers or some kind of definitive way to quantify how much of the public is reading your product, you can't get many advertisers, but strictly speaking, the American public does not pay for its journalism - nor has it ever, really. Not to mention, journalism does not have a static delivery system - by that meaning it is tied to one medium to get delivered. Maybe in days past, sure, but nowadays, people can get their information fix from a variety of places - television, newspaper, radio, the Internet - and Witt's question, I think, assumes that the only real way to receive that information is through the traditional print. And that may be a large part of the reason we see newspapers stuck in such a quagmire. It's not just, as I've opined before, that the industry failed largely to plan for the Internet and become early adopters of the tool - it's wholesale snobbery and head-in-the-sandedness that allows them to continue to think that the journalistic world is flat, and it drops off sharply at its newspaper-bereft edges. Information (think town criers of days of old) has a long and storied tradition of being free - hence the public's aversion to paying for it. True, that town crier still had to be paid, but it wasn't a townsperson that walked up and tossed a shilling at him, either. As Gahran said, the better questions are:

How can society continue to receive the benefits of journalism, given the current media environment? Also, which players might provide those benefits, and how?

And I agree - it won't come solely from traditional sources. As information and sourcing becomes easier and easier thanks to the Internet, the American public will have even more choices for their journalism. And likely none of them will require payment before reading.