I love being a Missourian reporter. My work means I get to interact with people from all sorts of backgrounds that I wouldn’t meet on the day-to-day.Yet I have been struggling with balancing reporting with my other tasks. The following text explains why, and is meant not as a complaint, but as an exploration of my thoughts as of late.

I have per week, at least four readings per each of my other two classes. Each takes at least 45 minutes to an hour for me to adequately internalize their arguments and be ready to discuss them in a seminar (which I’m graded on). I also have to pen well-thought out responses and talking points. Frequently, it takes much longer than an hour, depending on the reading. For my TA position, I have to take a few hours per week to grade assignments, and do readings for that. I have two hours of office hours.

Yet in this program there are many assignments that aren’t tied to a weekly schedule: prepare a 7450 multimedia presentation, do a deep dive on readings to prepare reading notes for a class, research and write an essay on theory, prepare for the collaborative research paper we’re going to write in one of my classes, research and write an in-class presentation for another class, have meetings with professors to suss out the subject of my project or thesis and plan out my future courseload, do a biweekly GA shift, make consistent progress on stories, and more.

Then there are things outside of class: engage in extracurricular opportunities like student innovation competitions or workshops (they often lead to just as much learning as in-class opportunities), maintain healthy relationships with my parents and girlfriend, keep in touch with friends, eat healthily, budget appropriately, work out at least once or twice a week (at minimum), find time to prepare meals for the week, and somehow find time to unwind.

I have been using the programs I cited a few weeks ago to make all of this easier, but the fact is that none of it has been made easier, just more organized. Frequently, by mid-week, I find myself emotionally drained. I believe this is largely due to the expectations of a graduate program, especially one at a top J-school.

Regardless, it results in a feeling of constantly being underwater, and not necessarily knowing how to get to the surface. I’ve pushed back against my workload, but it sometimes ends up in me being more underwater than I was at the start, having inappropriately used my time when there were more pressing concerns. When I do actually pick the most urgent tasks to tackle, they end up taking up so much time that I find myself falling asleep at my desk with a to-do list that has maybe one thing checked off. It’s really god damn hard, is what I’m saying, and I’m doing my best to stay afloat, but I wish I could find a way to feel more confident about the time I put into all of it.

I’m a detail-oriented writer, when it comes to fact-checking processes processes. I want to make sure that every sentence is empirically correct and that every statement I make, and every statement made by a source, is correct.

Frequently we, as reporters, rely on outside testimony: arguments made by sources, presented as their arguments and not ours; biographical details or other information that we can’t get ourselves;

I’ve long thought about philosophies of verification.

At the Baltimore City Paper, I for the first time was tasked with fact-checking others’ work. As someone in an editor’s seat at a college paper, this was an alien task. At The Retriever, we edited for clarity and rhetoric. That was about it. At City Paper, I was calling and checking every single factual claim made.

The AC/CQ process used at The Missourian has been informative in this regard. It’s important that the phrasing of a quote or attributed idea match what someone intended. Too often journalists hides behind an understanding of what sources say as “up to them”  — that we as reporters aren’t responsible for ensuring that what a source says is correct, for separating wheat from chaff. That’s clearly incorrect, as the Mizzou j-school teaches. The AC/CQ process does an OK job of checking this.

So what do I do when something falls in the middle?

What do I do when consulting a scientist or lawyer to explain something complex, and find myself unable to determine if their telling is fairly framed? What do I do when asking a source about climate change, and they somehow frame the information in a manner that underplays certain findings or overplays others?

What do I do when someone provides information about their personal background that, unknown to me, distorts the reality of a given situation in their past? What if they were born in Hallsville, not Columbia, and that somehow makes for an important distinction in the future?

What do I do when a politician refers to a sewer issue as a serious problem that affects every business owner he knows, but I lack the institutional knowledge to interrupt and check his understanding? Do I publish his statement and make it clear that he’s speaking for himself, not me? Do I check with business owners as to whether he’s correct, or in some other way investigate his statement? Do I ask him for his evidence, or do I accept it as a campaign statement and focus my time on other important issues?

These questions, I suspect, would have different answers depending on the editor or publication.

If we publish inappropriately-framed info, that’s on our head when people find out, not just the source. Yet an AC/CQ process will never be able to adequately account for these things. As a result, in situations of higher stakes, we do a deeper dig on what is or isn’t correct, because it’s our head if we’re wrong. Yet that implies some sort of acceptance of incorrect reporting for less-important stories.

In deciding on the school I’d attend for a master’s, I read a lot of opinion pieces by reporters and (more frequently) former reporters as to whether or not a master’s degree was a worthwhile endeavor in journalism.

I can say, rather confidently, that graduate school is helping me become a better reporter. I can also say that doing anything else in the industry would lead to many of the same lessons and experiences.

For background, I want to cite some of the sources I consulted in my decision-making as to if I should attend journalism school, and to get some sort of selection criteria.

I read Ezra Klein, who has a very populist, craft-first understanding of the field and who wrote that “letting someone pay you a bit of money to become a journalist, or even pay you nothing at all, is better than paying a j-school a lot of money to become a journalist.”

I read the CJR issue that debated the value of journalism. The most valuable thing I took from it was Alexandria Nealson’s argument that, especially for people in social groups that face various forms of social oppression, J-school helps you secure a place in the queue of people considered for jobs.

I read Hamilton Nolan, who argues the following: “As a profession and as a society we should be actively discouraging young people from going to J-school. It’s unnecessary! It’s a big ripoff! And it contributes to a lack of diversity and an economic elitism that is detrimental to the goal of equality in news coverage! It’s all fucked up!”

Recently I found Jay Yarow’s argument that J-school can teach you a lot about reporting in a condensed time that a freelance gig cannot.

Other takes:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-cox/is-journalism-grad-school_b_839356.html
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/journalism-school-2315974
https://newrepublic.com/article/72485/j-school-confidential

A common strain among all of these were arguments as to whether or not it was a worthwhile choice for individuals to decide to go, and whether it would make their reporting better.

I write for a daily at Mizzou, and within this context I’ve learned a lot. Editors’ comments, in just two months, have helped me chisel out workflows that make more sense and that lead to better newsmaking.

I know, however, that these are things I could learn at a daily with a staff writer position. My editors might be less talented there, but I also wouldn’t have to manage the nigh-impossible task of balancing about 10-12 hours of reading a week at the absolute minimum with trying to turn stories around at normal newsroom speeds.

Still, reporting acumen was not why I decided to go to J-school. I knew I could get that in or out of the classroom. Journalism is more than writing things down.

To say otherwise, to me, ignores the idea that academia in various industries and the creation and deliberation over theory actually lead to societal good (an idea, I’d note, that is foundational to the creation of modern society.) It ignores the importance of trying things out without having to worry about surviving at the end of the day because you didn’t turn enough stories around while you freelance. It ignores the value of questioning the core values of journalism and seeing how those values have changed with time. These are all extremely vital components of the journalism school experience.

In J-school I have been given a chance to figure out audio editing on my own, outside of the classroom, and not feel like I was wasting my time doing it. I’ve been able to grapple with the worst instincts of our industry, like in a recent class where we debated whether or not the horse-race coverage of major outlets is doing service to democracy. I’ve been able to talk to people who are questioning what the industry will look like in 10 years in an era with fundamentally different consumption habits than we see now.

Because I’m at a land grant, public university, I’ve also been able to do this while avoiding the subject of the most blistering critiques of journalism schools: the cost. At Mizzou, a degree is maybe a third of the cost of other major universities. As a result, I don’t feel like I’m setting myself up for a huge financial struggle after graduation.

I’m going to write more about this. When I have any sort of personal time (ha. haha. ha…) I’m going to write something at length where I summarize arguments for and against, and relate my own experiences without trying to indict the J-school industry as a whole. For now, though, I feel relatively confident with my decision to attend Mizzou.

There are things in reporting practice that I’m good at, and things that I’m bad at.

For example, I’m pretty decent at putting a story together by instinct (though I should pay much more attention to structure). I’m pretty good at maintaining eye contact and being aware of my body language and phrasing in a face-to-face interview.

In contrast, I’m terrible at writing quickly.

There have been hundreds of missed opportunities to quote a source in my reporting career. It shows in my studies, too — writing an essay or taking notes just takes me longer than other people.

I often find myself asking sources to slow down, or to jump back a few second. This is fine, as people tend to understand. Still, it is not a consistently applicable practice: not every quote I try to write is in a dialogic setting.

If someone’s walking and talking, or they are impatient or just are the sort of public figure to expect me to run with whatever I heard the first time and get it right, I can’t press the pause or rewind button.

People propose two solutions to this:

1. Use shorthand. Problem is, I get caught up in embracing existing shorthand systems (which have pre-established rules that save time and have been proven effective by the effects of consistent revision over decades but lacks adaptability to different reporting contexts), or developing my own (which has the advantage of flexibility, but lacks the systematic thinking, reviewability and consistency of a formalized system).
2. Record your interviews. I do this, but I have noticed that regardless of intent, it encourages reliance on the recording to get a given quote. I’ll dig more specifically into my issues later, but suffice it to say that I find this a rather hollow solution to the issue of not being fast enough. At best, it’s a decently reliable crutch. At worst, it’s a distraction from reporting.

I recognize that I’m way too in my head about this. I need to just develop a shorthand system and let it evolve with time. Yet I think deeply considering these questions and coming out on the other side with an idea of what the best solution is shouldn’t be discarded.

Sure, I can just get started on it, but decisions on best practices in a given situation are always relevant. I should always worry, before reporting out a given story, how to best ensure I can get the information I need.

When it comes to sensitive subjects, I try to maintain an emotional literacy. Yet as a reporter, sometimes I need to push past where I’d normally be comfortable out of respect for a person’s emotions, to gather a piece of information to either inform my future work or to inform the public. This can be difficult.

In class, Katherine said that “humans are incredibly resilient,” which is true. I do not wish to act as a gatekeeper on what a person will or won’t say, but at the same time know that working with a source requires a real sensitivity to their emotional state, which as of yet I’ve been unable to do with a specific source.

So: I’m faced with needing to better a relationship with a source who has been through suffering, because that person represents the best shot I have at getting information on a subject matter. Yet I don’t know her well, and don’t want to put her in an uncomfortable place regarding her experiences because that could damage our relationship as we move forward.

My current strategy has been to avoid reaching out out of fear of hurting the person but that won’t do. Just need to plan more, I guess.

 

Twice now, I’ve caught myself making assumptions about the subjects of my reportage. First, I felt spurned by an individual who had clearly received my attempts at contacting him, but responded only by texting that they would be available several days later — I was on deadline, and it frustrated me. The second time I was interacting with an office with control of public records, and after sunshine requesting those records I hadn’t received them for a few weeks. I felt they had slow-walked them.

My emotional response, in both cases, was to assume negative motivations on the part of the other party. In the former case, it was because they were visiting a family member after a medical emergency. The second case is still moving along, but regardless of motive the people I assumed were responsible in fact had little control over the situaiton.

“Getting in my feels,” in this gig, is an easy way to find myself making unfair assumptions about folks, and possibly treating them differently as a result. I need to lock that instinct down.