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| 2003 Reflections... | Reflections on American Journalism
By Laura Lica
America: A Matter of Choice
Between cozy comfort and remarkable performanceWhen I first arrived in Washington, D.C., I said to myself, “America is a matter of choice.” Thinking you can choose to judge it for its superficial aspects, or you can choose to dive into the unique and really interesting opportunities it offers, especially to a foreign journalist. At the end of my experience as a reporter at the Seattle P-I, I have to say journalism is also a matter of choice — in America and everywhere else. You can choose to see your job as a comfortable desk with your own computer, telephone and voicemail and a paycheck at the end of the month. For example, some people here never get excited about things that happen outside the area the newspaper covers. I think it is in the nature of a journalist to be interested and curious about everything unusual that happens in the world. During the blackout, New York was closer to Romania than to Seattle. You can also choose to learn from everything, good or bad, and use the opportunity to further explore your own potential and a whole new world. I think this is also true for the American reporters, some of them choosing to be simply comfortable and some others using their means to be the best. I feel this is going to happen in my country too, as we head toward better times, with more decent salaries and better living standards. Some people will stop at the comfort level. This awareness makes me feel more cautious with myself. It makes me guard my dreams of becoming a much better journalist more fiercely. The experience of coming from Romania and working in America is like a trip into the future. Who wouldn’t give anything for that? So many things happen here and will happen at home as well, as we advance economically, politically and socially. And how many people wouldn’t act better if they knew what the future held? Sounds almost sci-fi, but it’s actually a very realistic experience. Learning experiences To put it short I’ve learned several things during my experience at the P-I: FOI doesn’t work very well when you have to get information that obviously doesn’t favor the authorities. I still haven’t gotten answers to some of my public disclosure requests. I did manage to publish the stories and document them properly, though. It’s great to see how the investigative reporters do their work here, spending 5-6 months on a story, getting in depth, interviewing people several times, gaining their trust and then publishing a really compelling story. My writing skills also improved. For example, accuracy on asking when a person was born and not how old they are (Chris Callahan lesson), to the short paragraphs, short quotes, clarity, better leads and so on. I mainly became more self conscious about my professional level and I know better what I need to improve and how I can do it. Now it’s just a matter of practice. I would also like to share all this with my colleagues, so I will use the transcripts I’ve got and I will spread them around, saying I am available for anybody who might have questions. Internal Communication in the Newsroom Talking about some more specific things I’ve learned here, I would say I am really impressed with the internal communication the newsroom has. Every day everybody gets e-mails from designated reporters (they take turns) who comment on the previous day’s newspaper: the good stories, the not so good stories, what worked best, what didn’t really work and so on. This way you can read how your colleagues appreciated your work and what they thought could be improved. Also everybody receives a list of the most frequently viewed photo on the Internet edition or the most read stories of the day. Except for these regular mails almost everyday people communicate with all their colleagues. When someone needs a source for a certain story, they ask everyone in the newsroom through one mail: “Does anybody know anyone in this area?” When someone finds a better job and decides to leave the newspaper, or a new person is hired they announce it by e-mail, explaining the reasons of the change and some other details. Every time someone retires or leaves the newspaper there is a small party for them, more like a meeting in fact, where the person says goodbye to all colleagues and people have a glass of juice and cookies to celebrate it. I think all these types of internal communication tie people together and create a good channel of communication between the leadership of the newspaper and the reporters. Even though no communication is perfect, almost any communication is better than no communication. Stylebook and ethics code I think a newspaper stylebook and ethics code would be very useful and could serve as a good example for other media groups in my country. If every journalist would write down some ideas, then all of them could be gathered together in an initial manuscript. A task group would arrange them in a logical order and select the best ones, then show the rough product to the reporters using e-mail. Eventually, a more final product could be posted on the newspaper’s site, asking readers, democracy groups and reputable international media organizations to add their own ideas. I think even trying to do this would be a learning process that makes people think about it. Although I don’t think journalists would immediately start following them, the first step is to have them. Then, as we progress, we’ll get to be more respectful of rules. Writing programs Journalists at the P-I write using a program called CCI. Basically, it’s a program that allows you to have many more options for your text. This, again, is a communication issue, but between reporters and editors this time. A reporter can use a note option that allows him to turn gray any parts of the text that he thinks could be cut if the editor thinks the story is too long but he still wants to show everything you got. One can also add explanations or different observations in gray. Other options are also available, like pushing a button to send your text to the editor, measuring your story, and reading the texts of your colleagues once they’re sent to the editor if you’re curious to see what they delivered that day. You can easily color differently certain parts of your text and use them as “notes.” I will talk to my boss about this program and maybe we can apply some of it. It can save time for both the editor and the reporter. You can give your editor your observations without having to interrupt when he/she is busy with another story, and you can practically offer two versions of the same story—the long and the short one, so there will be fewer complaints about what the editor left out under the time constraints and so on. I think most of these options could be available just by establishing a code, so it wouldn’t be necessary to buy the program—it’s quite expensive. I also wish to mention that beyond the professional experience, living by oneself in a foreign country is a very good experience for anybody, but especially for a journalist. And you can never imagine how strong the feeling is, until you really try it. I wish to thank AFPF and the Seattle P-I for giving me this opportunity. I grew up a lot as a person and as a professional journalist.
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