By Nina Akhmeteli
Reporter, Georgia Today
Tbilisi, Georgia
Hosted by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Mass media in Georgia reminds me of a teenager that is young and inexperienced but very ambitious. And I, a reporter from the newspaper Georgia Today, was a "typical representative" of the mass media in my country.

I remember the call from AFPF Executive Director Susan Albrecht saying "I have good news for you!" Good news was that I was chosen to be one of eight AFPF fellows spending five and a half months in the United States.

Working in a large American newspaper is not only a great personal experience but a good way for me to raise the bar for the news media in Georgia by sharing the experience gained during the hard but exciting five month fellowship.

Deadlines, sources, interviews...At first sight, the life in a U.S. newsroom is similar to ours back in my country. But as I first stepped into the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newsroom where reporters, photographers, editors and designers are striving to become the first and the most reliable source of information for readers in Seattle, I realized how far Georgian journalism is from U.S. media.

Now I am going back home and there is much more than my three suitcases that I am bringing home with me.

The Seattle P-I newsroom is an established, well-organized "factory" that produces operative news stories, photos, features, special and investigative reports, editorials and columns. I was shocked and excited by the diversity and variety of published stories in this paper as well as by the experience and professional skills of the people behind every story published on the Seattle P-I pages. Reporters regularly attend workshops, trainings and discussions that keep them on track and encourage them to move forward, improve and upgrade their professional skills.

The P-I’s professionalism, high ethical standards, fairness, accuracy and endless striving to improve its quality gain the public’s trust and respect and help the P-I survive in a tough, competitive environment.

My fellowship started in the Metro section, working side by side with reporters covering breaking news, crime or just routine daily press meetings. Writing on deadline is one of the most challenging tasks for journalists. Writing accurate stories in one or two hours means that in most cases the stories are very similar to dozens of reports in other newspapers. How can reporters at the P-I write accurate, objective and timely stories in two hours or even less?

Knowing the issue and working together is the key. Reporters do background research and share their ideas with photographers and graphic designers for using effective illustrations. Very often one of the reporters is responsible for background research, while several other reporters report the various aspects of the breaking story. As a result, readers receive a complete, coherent story about the news of the day.

Every story in the P-I, whether it is an in-depth investigative report or a short local news item, is based on the key principles of journalism—fairness, accuracy and independence.

American reporters often spend more time checking the facts than even reporting and writing. They are accurate using quotes and explain "how" they have got the information: by email, phone or an in-person interview with a source.

They spend much more time making phone interviews and gathering comments from different sources. It does not mean though that they do not go outside the newsroom to report, but phone interviews are often the quickest way to write for deadline using a variety of different sources.

I haven't seen any story in the Seattle P-I with only one source, unlike our media in Georgia where officials, despite their declared democracy and press freedom, are still unable to accept the news media in its "new" role as a watchdog. Officials often not even reply to calls from journalists. Reporters, in their turn, very often do not care about "showing" different sides of an issue or checking the information with various sources. The news media is full of poorly written paraphrases of news releases or governmental statements.

Inaccurate biased reports and violations of professional and ethical standards by journalists affect the level of trust towards media in society and development of democracy in the country. News organizations in Georgia often are more concerned about gaining advertising than they are about their reputation as a reliable source of information. Hoping that readers will "eat" stories written for popularization or promoting different businesses, Georgian newspapers are losing their readers, and journalists often are violating one of the main principles of the profession—fairness.

I spent the whole day after my first story was published in a U.S. newspaper responding to phone calls and emails from readers, and I quickly realized how important the input of readers is in making journalists more responsible, accurate and inspired, and how that cooperation makes readers more aware and involved in the ongoing processes in their society.

For the Seattle P-I, readers are not only customers helping to measure demand and public interest towards various issues, but they are participants—key sources and motivators for the reporters and editors. The newspaper or the website is not just what the newsroom offers to its readers; it is a product of the cooperation and active involvement of readers.

Readers, in turn, are demanding and unforgiving about mistakes in a story, which makes the media more responsible and attentive to even the smallest detail. Corrections in the newspaper, which are more an exception than an obligation for the Georgian media, and online are extremely important. It is a way to prove that the news organization is responsible and cares about accuracy.

The interactivity of websites, the most complicated and interesting issue in media discussions today, is much higher than in traditional media. How to present stories online and take advantage of new technologies is probably not fully understood even by the leading newspapers today, but there are already some "rules" for writing and then placing stories online, making a web site more attractive and easy to navigate for readers.

The www.seattlepi.com website is updating throughout the day and night. Features, reports, photo galleries, videos and blogs offered for visitors of the web site have opened up for me great possibilities for the development of "new media" in Georgia and making Georgia Today’s website more attractive, interesting and informative than it is now.

I learned a lot during the two AFPF organized seminars dedicated to interviewing, researching, the reporting and writing process, and from the experience of the leading journalists gathered at a National Writers Workshop in Portland about investigative reporting, multimedia and storytelling. Through workshops I will pass on to my colleagues in Georgia Today’s newsroom these practical skills. I will also adopt for myself and share with my colleagues the coaching process we learned at The Poynter Institute (www.poynter.org).

In addition to dozens of handouts and books about journalism, the wide array of websites available will help journalists in my newsroom to grow professionally via online courses, conferences and workshops offered by various media organizations.

Overall, the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships has launched a new era in my career, and now it is time for me to start a new era at my newspaper - to make at least one step towards the time when officials in Georgia just cannot ignore calls from journalists, because we, like our U.S. counterparts, are professionals, and we do a good job.