Journalist Tantrums

As a journalist, I have made an oberservation: Journalists have an expectation that everyone will do an interview.

People, of course, have the right to refuse interviews. When they do, I've seen plenty of journalists get irrate. Journalists won't easily take "no" for an answer.

A lot of journalists feel they are entitled to information and a person's story. Democracy, afterall, is built on freedom of information. It is also built on the right to say "no."

While I respect a person's right to say "no," it certainly messes up a story. For instance, say when you lose the "other side's" perspective because of a refusal to do an interview. When people say the media is one-sided, well, sometimes that's because the "other side" doesn't want to talk. What's a journalist to do? One side is better than no sides.

Killers and Sins

A good friend of mine with a little too much time on his hands decided to anagram my name.

He came up with "seen any killers" and "really keen sins."

Yikes. Killers and sins? No fuzzy bunny rabbits for me. Perhaps it's appropriate because I covered the crime beat for two years as a journalist, which is why nothing phases me anymore.

Now I'm onto more uplifting subject matter - education and the arts, which is why nothing phases me.

Drama and Documentary

I went to the Laramie Project last night. Essentially the Laramie Project is a play about how the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard ripped apart the community of Laramie, Wyoming.

Instead of having a normal play structure with traditional acts and scenes, the Laramie Project was pieced together like a documentary with actors reciting actual interviews from the residents of Laramie.

The Techtonic Theatre company spent a lot of time in Laramie doing the interviews with the residents, so it was really neat to see what is essentially journalism in the form of drama.

The dark side...

I hate it when communication types have to apologize for their jobs. "I'm sorry. I sold out." Whatever. Plush government or corporate job = big salary + three to four weeks of holidays a year + good benefits. When is the journalism industry going to catch up? Low pay, often lots of contract work, anti-union and long hours. I think journalism should be called the dark side because they haven't caught up to the 21st century when it comes to professional labour standards. The only reason PR is the dark side is because communication types are obstacles to getting information when their employer falls into controversy. Communication types = self-serving obstacles who have sold out freedom of information and democracy.