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| 2003 Reflections... | Reflections on American Journalism
By Surendra Phuyal
My Roadmap Ahead
Commitment, dedication, discipline, firm journalistic drive to set — and achieve — goals, as well as focus, hard work and professionalism are some of the traits of journalists here that make papers like the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette truly top class newspapers in the United States. Qualities like these among the news staff, coupled with a totally independent and non-interfering editorial environment, make U.S. newsrooms even better forums to practice journalism. What surprises me most is the fact that rather than interfering in the editorial matters, publishers here promote fairness, enterprise and deep investigations. Last month’s Toledo Blade series on the atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam in the 60s, which also ran in the Post-Gazette — The Blade’s sister newspaper — and the whistle-blower doctors’ series are two best examples. Here, people don’t fool around in newsrooms, they go after the information and, often times, they are very diligent and enterprising. For their part, readers don’t want to read regular trash, there’s a real newspaper culture here. If a writer makes a mistake, he’ll not survive. This means that only those who can be fair, objective, enterprising and right on time survive in the market. Those who can’t, don’t. These are precisely the kinds of values I would like to take home with me, and institute at The Kathmandu Post. In the long run, I would like to share my experiences with those young journalists who work in my city and my country. Soon after I return home and rejoin my office, I will brief my editors and fellow reporters about my experience as a reporter, as an editorial writer, as a feature writer and as a journalist cultivating enterprise stories. I will tell them what we as journalists or newsrooms possess and what we don’t. For example, having walkie-talkies that policemen carry in the newsroom — and a crime reporter/editor holding on to it — greatly helps the city desk monitor accidents, crimes and other incidents taking place in the city. This is a very cheap and easy method of monitoring the city, which, I believe, editors in many growing newspapers around the world continue to ignore. In addition to that, I will suggest my editors to have such essential electronic news-monitoring gadgets as TV and radio in the newsroom and constantly monitor them. I will tell my fellow editors and reporters that they double check and verify facts and information several times before including them in their articles and news stories, and before running them in the paper. I will remind them that journalists should not be carried away by fantastic and true-sounding stories and tell them to verify the sources of information before actually pursuing them. If there are mistakes in the paper — typos or otherwise, I will encourage my editors to run corrections on a regular basis. Publishing corrections, I will tell them, helps to further the paper’s credibility — not the other way around. Just because the paper has a tiny little space allocated for ‘Today’s Corrections,’ however, should not mean that mistakes are acceptable. In order to revolutionize day-to-day journalism and make it a really powerful tool in democracy, I will encourage my editors to set up an enterprise/investigative news bureau, which would have a couple of reporters working on pertinent local and national issues for weeks, if not months, so they can put together some ground-breaking stories that would help turn things around. Investigative journalism and in-depth pieces are something we badly lack in our newspapers back home. To improve the quality and punch of the paper’s editorial voice, I will encourage editorial writers to better update themselves and hold extensive discussions on the issue in question before going on to write editorials. Also, I will encourage the Op-ed team to shun mediocrity, give space to thought-provoking articles and provide a forum to the readers. Encouraging feedback, like they do in U.S. newsrooms, helps the paper. Most editors back home have yet to realize that. I will take sample copies of what I think are great Post-Gazette editions home and show my colleagues how great newspapers are put together. While the city desk needs to be revamped, I also will make some suggestions to improve our paper’s business/economy and sports sections. I will encourage my editors to create health and environment, entertainment, book and travel sections and expand the horizons of the newspaper catering to the masses with varying tastes. Truly, there’s a long way to go. And my hands-on experience in the U.S. news room has boosted my confidence as a reporter. Personally, rather than the familiar byline parroting — or narrating — those day-to-day speeches and rhetoric, I would like to shine as an enterprise story man, an investigative reporter, someone who likes to go beyond the news — a better news manager, a writing coach; overall, an inspiring personality for the younger generation of journalists in my region. I will be the kind of journalist who will have the passion to travel to remote areas, listen to the stories of the poor, the disadvantaged and the voiceless and tell their stories to the ruling elites in the capital city — and possibly the world. As I travel around the country to gather news and stories of the voiceless, the downtrodden, I will encourage the district correspondents to be accurate, fair and objective. Now that I’ve worked in the United States, I will continue to remain abreast of the developments in U.S. newsrooms and, depending on their needs, would love to write stories about Nepal or my region for them once in a while. After returning home, I will start seeing things with a new eye, a new perspective. What that means is that I will start giving new angles and better perspectives — of course, relevant and reader-friendly ones — to my stories. And it will not take long for me to accomplish these goals, provided there is a perfect working environment and supportive managers and editors. I can make significant strides on those fronts in the next two to three years. How successful I have become by then will depend largely on how my readers, my colleagues, my competitors and the government — which often tends to be at the receiving end — react or respond to my stories. I will celebrate my success with my colleagues and my gurus, drawing inspiration to perform even better in the future.
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