Post 9: Apprehensive journalism
Chip Scanlan led a session that addressed the apprehension and fears that traditional journalists have about today’s complex challenges and the kind of comprehensive, do-it-all journalism that seems to be overtaking newsrooms. He read a “parable” he had written based on this Ezra Pound quote:
“You cannot tell people what to do, you can only tell them parables, and that is what art really is, particular stories of particular people and experiences from which each according to his needs may draw his own conclusions.” – Ezra Pound
The Scanlan parable describes nearly every journalist’s concerns, but it outlines his own career. He has lived most of his professional life as a “content provider” – as a gifted writer and a writing coach. But with the expansion of hardware and software tools available to journalists in practicing their craft he “began to fear teaching something he wasn’t a professional at.”
Scanlan is highly successful in every regard and he has worked diligently to keep up as much as he can with changes in information-delivery options, yet he experienced the same fears all journalists have until he realized that few people in the world possess today’s entire information-production skillset… and he realized that he was actually doing a pretty good job of staying current and understanding the new stuff.
He realized he didn’t have to be able to do it all himself as long as he had expertise in at least one area, an appreciation of how everything else works to reach and inform an audience and the ability to team with others who have strengths where he has limited skills.
It is a tale of success and failure, showing that a person with skills in one area can keep plunging forward to expand the skillset if he or she is patient and perseveres.
Scanlan said that while he has had his struggles he learned to use a content-management system and blogging software, “fell in love with the hyperlink” and learned to leverage user metrics to see who is reading his work and when. He admitted that he has tried podcasting without success and he didn’t like his first attempt at guesting on a major national radio show, yet since then he has found success in similar pursuits.
“You don’t need to know how to do everything you can do,” he said. “Nouns trump adjectives. Journalism may be ‘online’; journalism may be ‘multimedia’; journalism may be ‘multiplatform’; but journalism is still journalism.”
He said he found that core values are still “the bedrock of communicating,” you don’t have to be able to do the technology stuff at an expert level to teach it and added that he had “found a sense of peace, hope and optimism.”
Participants in the seminar workshopped Scanlan’s parable for a while, getting into discussion groups and reporting back a few minutes later. There wasn’t enough time to delve deeply into the content of the conversations, but a few points emerged:
EVERYONE in communications has a fear of not being able to keep up. Even those who are experts with all of the new bells and whistles aren’t sure where things are going.
They worry about what audiences want now and where they will go next. There’s always yet another new form, format, version, challenge emerging in this time of accelerating technological change.
Lynne Adrine, a broadcast news veteran who’s worked with CNN, NBC, CBS and “MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour,” said even the top communicators at the nation’s top networks aren’t certain about things.
“One of my last jobs was at ABC.com,” she said. “It is tough to know how to integrate the power of the Internet. Even the networks are flat-footed about Internet applications. All they know about is preparing television packages. They just started to recognize the need for specialists.”
We have to believe in the possibility to learn even when we fail and even fail epically the first many times we try. Scanlan brought up Samuel Beckett’s much-quoted passage: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Scanlan had mentioned in his parable that he had once felt he was being “trapped by the tyranny of expertise.” He said and others in the group agreed that you don’t have to know how to do everything.
Just do your best and keep trying and respect and work well with people who know how to do what has to be done to communicate your message effectively.
