Look, I think anything artistic or creative is somewhat of a long shot. That said, your method seems as good as any and better than most.
So, even though the print journalism is trading print dollars for Internet dimes, you might have a series of good jobs and promotions. And why not, it has to be someone.
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I think journalism is in a bad way. It's "safe," timid, too much focused on government announcements. Too much of what passes for "journalism" is trying to wheedle a government official to say a little more than he or she said before, or be a little more definite of whether he or she is going to run for president.
Specific example, okay, this pertains to swine flu.
"Report Finds Swine Flu Has Killed 36 Children,” New York Times, Denise Grady, Sept. 3, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/healt ... .html?_r=1
“ . . . In children without chronic health problems, it is a warning sign if they seem to recover from the flu but then relapse with a high fever, Dr. Frieden said. The relapse may be bacterial pneumonia, which must be treated with antibiotics. . . ”
Well, that' s a pretty useful fact. In poker terms, that's a playable hand. And yet, that kind of specific was very rare. All the lavish discussion of swine flu (and plain old regular flu kills about 36,000 Americans a year, roughly comparable to motor vehicle accidents, and presumably about the same proportion as in other countries) and a lot of the discussion came down to kind of abstract situations in a vacuum. Should an unspecified general person get a vaccine, how much danger is there from flu for unspecified general person, should a person see a doctor or start Tamiflu with 'average' symptoms, etc? As if the journalist is not sufficiently interested to dive into the topic.
The other specific, in all its zen simpicity, is if you start having trouble breathing, get help pronto.
Another example, in the run up in our war against Iraq in 2002 and 2003 (I'm an American), how many of the hard questions did we really ask and pursue? Bush Administration claims of weapons of mass destruction, largely accepted. That was viewed as kind of the main framework. Again, I think out of a combination of timidity, intellectual laziness, playing it "safe." We're 100% accurately giving government announcements, we sure are. And we're racing to scoop other media outlets. But somehow, we're neglecting to tell facts about the world, almost as if that would be "editorializing" (!) (!) (!)
So, there certainly is a need for independent journalism. Whether or not a person can make money out of it . . . well, maybe.
29 Jun 2011, 10:29 pm
