Journalism isn’t narcissism, as Hamilton Nolan noted correctly in his Gawker headline. But as Nolan elaborated, I heard an old theme that I think has misguided lots of journalists. Journalism also isn’t machinery. Journalism is practiced by humans, and journalists and journalism professors who deny their humanity diminish their journalism.
Nolan found fault with a New York Times piece by Susan Shapiro, an author and journalism professor he dismissed as “teaching a gimmick: the confessional as attention-grabber.”
Shapiro encourages her feature-writing students to “shed vanity and pretension and relive an embarrassing moment that makes them look silly, fearful, fragile or naked.” Nolan counters that journalism students instead need to be taught to write other people’s stories:
Your friends, and neighbors, and community members, and people across town, and across your country, and across the world far and wide are all brimming with stories to tell. Stories of love, and war, and crime, and peril, and redemption. The average inmate at your local jail probably has a far more interesting life story than Susan Shapiro or you or I do, no matter how many of our ex-boyfriends and girlfriends we call for comment. All of the compelling stories you could ever hope to be offered are already freely available. All you have to do is to look outside of yourself, and listen, and write them down.
I believe both journalists are right. Journalists need to tell the important untold stories of their communities. Most journalism should be outward-looking. But personal insight can and often should be part of the process of listening and writing down other people’s stories.
Nolan probably would have approved of the teaching approach of one of my journalism professors (who has long since died, so I won’t name him) who forbid his students from writing in the first person. No one cares what the journalist thinks, this professor said, allowing rare exceptions for columnists who have built strong personal connections with readers over the years.
I generally don’t believe in extremes and for too much of my career, too much of journalism swung to the Nolan extreme, preaching “objectivity” and telling journalists to keep themselves out of their stories. When I did some disaster reporting in Venezuela for the Des Moines Register in 2000, my editors wouldn’t let me write a first-person account that told the stories of the people I encountered but made me a character in the story.
Those same journalists who say we should be objective also preach that our job is to “seek truth and report it,” the first principle of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.
Well, here’s a truth many of those journalists overlook or deny: We can’t keep ourselves out of our stories. We’re not objects; we’re people. Those stories of love, and war, and crime, and peril, and redemption that journalists need to tell require a lot of humanity to tell effectively. Even if you never use first person or never make the story about yourself, your own humanity and the personal connection you make is essential to the success of the interview(s) that will help you tell those stories.
In this particular context, I’m not criticizing the culture of objectivity in the sense of journalists expressing opinions, though I’ve done that. What concerns me here is the call to suppress our individual humanity — the personal insight and experience that can enhance storytelling.
One of the best journalists I ever worked with was Ken Fuson, formerly of the Des Moines Register. Ken didn’t use first person a lot in his writing, but every story he wrote reflected Ken’s humanity — his empathy with the people he wrote about, his sense of humor, his sense of tragedy, his gift of using the right words and the perfect metaphors.
A group of Digital First Media journalists recently discussed the issue of journalists’ expressions of opinion and Jay Rosen‘s criticism of the “View from Nowhere” practice of journalism (Jay joined that discussion). Our recommendations call for editors and reporters to discuss whether a reporter is experienced enough in his or her beat to start writing with authority. I think that’s an important distinction for journalists, news organizations and journalism professors to make — that journalism is not a one-size-fits-all profession. Sometimes we should keep the focus elsewhere, but we should not forget the value and power of the personal voice.
And sometimes, I believe, journalists need to recognize that we are in our stories and that we have insights and experiences that not only are worth sharing, but that we should share.
When Mimi was a columnist for the Minot Daily News in the early 1990s, I gave her some Nolan-like advice, encouraging her to tell the stories of people in the community and not to spend too much time telling personal stories. It was better to leave the community wanting to know more about you, I advised her, than to reveal so much that people wished you’d shut up.
Not for the first or last time in our marriage, Mimi didn’t follow my advice. She did tell lots of stories from the community, but those stories often came mixed with personal anecdotes and insights. And some columns were entirely personal (or about our family). I thought she wrote too much about personal matters. I was more circumspect in my editor’s column, mostly writing about community matters or explaining decisions we had made for the paper.
When the publisher fired me (and dropped Mimi’s column) in 1992, reaction from the community was much stronger about losing Mimi. She had made a stronger connection in the community than I had. Four other North Dakota newspapers quickly snapped up her column, and it took me six months to find a new job.
As Ann Friedman noted in her response to Nolan, a journalist’s personal connection to the community has an economic value that Andrew Sullivan may be demonstrating in his move to take the Daily Dish independent, supported only by subscriptions and donations from the community he has built blogging for various media companies. (I recommend Jay Rosen’s piece on the Sullivan move, too. Since I’ve sworn off writing about paywalls, I’m going to refrain from my own post about Sullivan’s move, but I’ve subscribed and I think his ad-free approach to supporting a small operation through subscriptions and donations, with no charge for people coming from inbound links, has better potential than most paywall efforts I’ve seen by newspapers.)
I probably blog too much here about my family and my career, but I also know that the personal connection I have made with readers of my blog has helped my career. Journalists absolutely should tell stories of other people. Those have been the best stories of my career and they are the stories I most enjoy as a reader and as a journalist. But we need to recognize the importance of humanity in journalism, too. I encourage journalists to follow the advice of both Hamilton Nolan and Susan Shapiro.
What do you think?
This is a topic I have addressed here before. Rather than repeating those points any further, I’ll list some links (a couple of them already linked above):
Storytelling in journalism: No estoy muerta (I am not dead)
Jeff Edelstein tells a difficult first-person story
Questions and answers on journalists’ opinions in social media
Journalists should be personable but professional in social media use
The heart: one of journalism’s best tools
Humanity is more important and honest than objectivity for journalists
An extremely small point about Andrew Sullivan: Readers paying a journalist directly is not new. Among his many predecessors was I.F. Stone.
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One of the best!
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My problem with Susan Shapiro’s class exercise isn’t that she’s teaching bad journalism — she doesn’t seem to be advocating that we write confessionally as a practice. It’s that the exercise is coercive, that it violates the privacy of her students (want a good grade? spill your guts). Journalism class is not group therapy. Students, even journalism students, are still entitled to a private life and a few secrets.
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Only a long-dead journalism professor taught about keeping “I” out of the story? “I” am one journalism prof who still does. “I” do not belong in professional reporting, only in columns, analyses, editorials, reviews. Otherwise, my student reporters would write all about themselves, as they have been trained to do in their English composition classes, and journalism is not about them.
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Your exceptions kind of make my point, Peter. Check my post about Allan Thompson’s Rwanda story. You might call it a column or analysis, but it is also, without question, outstanding professional reporting. And it would be a shame (and grossly inaccurate) to keep the reporter out of that story because of the arbitrary rules that professors like you teach. Journalism is usually not about the journalist, but we should have the honesty and courage to tell our own stories on occasion, rather than clinging to the comfort of your rules.
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I run three community weeklies with old-school, objective journalism. But I also write a personal column where I often expose my own foibles. It puts a human face on the paper (and website), yet hopefully maintains our journalistic credibility.
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Ruling the “I” out of journalism makes no more sense than gratuitously inserting it at every opportunity. There are stories, even “news” stories, when it absolutely has to be there, other stories when it’s a gross intrusion. If j-school profs aren’t teaching their students the difference, they’re not doing their job.
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How many times will the longstanding practice of fairness be dismissed in this straw-man fashion by arguing against objectivity? Been in the business 30 years, and never heard any editor urge objectivity, only fairness. … Now, I have no doubt that one can point to good journalism where the writer appears as a character. But far too many journalism students begin with the mistaken impression that what is needed is more writing, and more memoir, not more reporting. Having them get out of the “I” business is a good first step. Once they become very good reporters, such as the examples you point to, then they might find occasions where the “I” can come back in. Until then, it’s rarely a service to the story. Not never, but rarely.
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You don’t listen to journalists’ conversations very much if you don’t think objectivity is taught and preached extensively in the profession.
But you are way off base in suggesting that I have ever “dismissed” fairness. I don’t equate fairness with objectivity, and I do believe strongly in fairness. In another blog post, I noted Dan Gillmor’s suggestion that rather than striving for objectivity, we pursue a four-pronged approach of fairness, thoroughness, accuracy and transparency.
If you can find a place where I have “dismissed” fairness, please include a link. I will be happy to clarify. But I think you are the one using straw men here.
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Just one example: The SPJ ethics code that you link to speaks of fairness. Not a word about objectivity. Yet repeatedly you’ve argued against this oppressive notion of objectivity. If you can construct the same argument against fairness, have at it.
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Actually, I noted in this blog before (in one of the links cited above) that the SPJ code doesn’t mention objectivity.
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[…] Journalism isn’t narcissism, as Hamilton Nolan noted correctly in his Gawker headline. But as Nolan elaborated, I heard an old theme that I think has misguided lots of journalists. Journalism… […]
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“Objectivity” is the straw personage here. There are many ways to tell a story. Using verifiable facts is often the best one.
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“Using verifiable facts is often the best one.” Using verifiable facts by no means excludes the use of the pronoun “I.” In fact, it may sometimes demand that use. I don’t understand how a discussion of the personal pronoun in journalism has slid down the blog-slope into a pointless back-and-forth about objectivity and fairness.
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Using verifiable facts doesn’t preclude use of “I.” But it grounds that use.
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Thanks, Steve, for the reply. (I tried the link you provided, but didn’t find any mention on that page to “Dan Gillmor’s suggestion that rather than striving for objectivity, we pursue a four-pronged approach of fairness, thoroughness, accuracy and transparency.” Perhaps it’s the wrong link, or I’m missing it. I tried searching down the page for any of those concepts.)
Now, when have you dismissed fairness?
Let’s take this: You write: “One of journalism’s favorite notions is that we don’t become part of the story. We are supposed to be some sort of object (you know, objective) that doesn’t feel, that stays aloof and writes from an omniscient perch above it all.”
No one I’ve met in 30 years in journalism has ever argued anything of the sort. No one says we must stay aloof, that we must be omniscient. That’s not what’s taught in journalism schools.
What’s taught is fairness. Don’t take sides. Don’t write speeches for candidates. Don’t be an advocate. Report.
That’s where your straw man comes in. You’re arguing against what we don’t practice, while saying you’re for what we call what we do practice. It’s a dodge.
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I apologize for providing the wrong link. This is the post I was thinking of.
I can’t vouch for whom you’ve met in your 30 years of journalism, or how well you listen to them, but I have to call bullshit on your straw-man claim.
Did you read to the third paragraph of the post you quoted back to me? Here’s what I wrote just two paragraphs below the quote you cited above (from this post): “The Society of Professional Journalists denied it this week, somberly cautioning journalists in Haiti: ‘Report the story, don’t become part of it.'” Maybe you haven’t heard anyone argue anything of the sort, but I was responding to a press release from one of the most prominent organizations in journalism, not setting up a straw man.
And maybe you didn’t read the post I was responding to here, but Hamilton Nolan argued much the same thing: “By plundering your own life for material, you are not investing in yourself as a writer; you’re spending the principal.” Is that not telling journalists to stay out of the story?
Just three comments above your first comment, Peter Goodman wrote, “‘I’ do not belong in professional reporting.”
You’re welcome to disagree with me. I respect commenters who disagree. But when you make a false accusation, you lose credibility. That many journalists believe reporters should stay out of the story is a fact. And when I write about it, I link to people expressing that viewpoint. They might be right and I might be wrong. But I am not imagining or manufacturing them. I quote them and I link to them.
You need to meet more journalists. Or start listening to them. But you damn sure better check your facts before accusing me of making stuff up.
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I once subscribed to the no “I” in a news reporter’s work. No more. Reporters are not soulless robots, and readers know it. I now believe that reporters enhance their credibility by, where appropriate, acknowledging their own roles in stories — whether to bring more power to observed detail, to betray an emotion, to add the authority of personal experience or to admit a bias. Often, the result also is a more engaging read and a publication with personality.
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Well said, Jeff. We both used to work in a newsroom where first-person was a tough sell outside columns or feature pages.
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Nolan wasn’t saying to stay out of the story when you’re out covering news. Nolan was saying these young journalists have — odds are — done very little that’s news. You can’t see the difference?
Yes, we should stay out of the story when you’re not the news. You’re going beyond that, saying that telling people to stay out of the story is to pretend to omniscience! We’re saying we’re not omniscient, so we shouldn’t impose our view on the readers. You can’t see the difference between detachment and reserving judgment, on the one hand, and omniscience? Look up that word.
I fear you cannot. Or refuse to. You’ve staked your ground and must defend it.
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Don’t think I didn’t notice your not-so-deft shift from your bogus accusation to trying to split hairs about what Nolan said. I called bullshit on you when you used my quote in a straw-man accusation when I had specifically cited, linked to and quoted an example that supported my lead. And, by the way, that was about a reporter who was a legitimate part of the story.
Here’s what I know about you: You aren’t willing to put your name with your opinions and, when caught in a false accusation, you don’t acknowledge your error. You try to shift attention and accelerate your accusations. I normally try to engage commenters in discussion here. But I can’t think of a reason to go further with this one.
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Just being the Devil’s advocate, here: Perhaps the reason readers no longer trust journalists is that we continue to pretend in our writing that the story is originating from some Throne of Objectivity, remote, disembodied, in full possession of the facts (and nothing but), but without a history, an opinion, a life. Readers, of course, know better.. They see through this fiction instantly. Some journalism profs and some editors are the last to catch on.
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Well said, Bill.
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[…] Journalism isn’t narcissism, as Hamilton Nolan noted correctly in his Gawker headline. But as Nolan elaborated, I heard an old theme that I think has misguided lots of journalists. Journalism… […]
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Hi Steve. Thanks.
To clarify, Since 1993 I’ve taught very popular feature journalism classes called “Writing for NYC Newspapers and Magazines” for school of continuing education students, undergrads and graduate writing students. The goal of the class is to “write and publish a great piece.” I give 15 assignments including essays, op-eds, book reviews, profiles, q & a’s, service pieces, pitch and cover letters. Based on my own experience as a freelance writer and 20 years of teaching, I have found that the easiest way for a novice to break into the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, Salon, Slate and many other top publications is with a first person essay or op-ed piece about their own personal experience. While I have taught 15 week “Reporting” and “News writing” classes at NYU’s Journalism School, it takes much longer for a student to publish a news story.
I have also find that nothing will get a young person writing, reading, studying and taking more classes faster than getting a great piece of their own published.
Out of 15 assignments, none are “required,” my students can hand me whatever three pages they want each week. I grade based on the best 8 papers handed in. But I have found many students love first person essays and op-eds, have success with it, and hand in new essays or rewrites every single week, then take the class again (and again.) Very few writing teachers help students send out work, get published, get jobs and internships in the field. I’d guess that explains why I get so many return students and my classes are so fun and successful.
Sue Shapiro
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[…] my year-in-review, which was mostly an extraordinary number of internal links): Chuck Hagel, 10; narcissism, 19; beats, 28; plagiarism, 10; what should we stop […]
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Steve, I just read about the Nov. 5, 2013 Pew report saying that 16% of adults use twitter. http://www.journalism.org/2013/11/04/twitter-news-consumers-young-mobile-and-educated/.
I sometimes feel that that heavy twitter users and the media give the impression that everyone is on Twitter. It’s like they have trouble seeing outside a certain bubble. I’m just curious if you can think of any connection between this article/ the journalism-narcissism connection with Twitter use.
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[…] Journalism isn’t narcissism, but it’s not machinery either […]
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[…] Journalism isn’t narcissism, but it’s not machinery either […]
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