I must have entered a zone where untruths about my profession pop up before me and demand correcting. Here's the first paragraph from a review in this week's New York Times Book Review:
"A novelist once told me that he had given up writing journalism on the side because 'in journalism they only let you tell one story: Something Has Changed.'"
That is not true. In writing journalism, they let you tell two stories:
1. Something Has Changed.
2. There is a Threat that Something Will Change.
Take politics. Late last Nov. 6, something changed. A presidential candidate was elected. Many "change" stories were written about the event. They would have filled a couple of scrapbooks.
At least as far back as January, 2011, stories were already appearing regularly that something would change. A president would be elected in November, 2012. Those threat stories would fill a couple of thousand scrapbooks and, by and large, were more closely read, for meaning and for hints at resolution.
Take sports. Sports is a multi-billion-dollar industry based on the question, who will win? For the Super Bowl, the premier event in American sports, journalists had two weeks to write the threat stories, and a day or two to write the change stories. Which do you suppose would fill up more scrapbooks?
Take weather. What will the weather be? Every newspaper has a weather page, every local broadcast station has two or more reporters, and national television has celebrity reporters and at least one 24-hour channel, covering something that hasn't happened yet.
Take the pope. Global television showed the installation of the plain metal chimney being installed on the Sistine Chapel roof, which millions of people will be watching daily for the white smoke signaling change, as they read hundreds of stories about who the new pope might be.
Take Congress. There is no threat of any change there in the foreseeable future. But don't we wish there was, and we could read about it?
No comments:
Post a Comment