By Wallace Chuma
Harare, Zimbabwe

After submitting what I thought to be a very comprehensive story to my editor, I was depressed to see he had made so many corrections when he sent it back to me. The text was littered with questions, additions, suggestions—in fact there were more additions than the full text of my original story. For a while I thought he was being unfair. And that was only my second week at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The story was my first major assignment.

It was a feature story on the debate surrounding the reintroduction of the banned pesticide DDT in some parts of Africa as a way of combating malaria. As I was pursuing the story, I developed a personal inclination towards those experts who supported the “backdoor” use of the pesticide because the poor countries could not afford safer means of fighting malaria.

My story was therefore one-sided, arguing extensively in favor of the “dissident” views. It was only after reading through the editor’s comments that it struck me that I had ignored the “other” contending views on the subject. I also realized that my story sounded remote and distanced from the local community of Pittsburgh.

I had to go back to the drawing board. I drew up a list of people who, or institutions that, could offer other views, and reflected on how I could introduce a local dimension to the story. It was relatively easy locating experts, and, after a day or two of research, I discovered that a local environmentalist, Rachel Carson, had published a book in the 1970s calling for the banning of DDT because of its hazardous effects on the environment. Things began to fall into place, and I was proud of the final story. This time the editor did not make many additions.

To a large extent, this experience informed my work at the Post-Gazette. As I moved from one department to the next during the first eight weeks, before settling “permanently” on the issues desk, I realized the principles were the same: thorough research and checking of facts, representing both views in the story, making the story relevant to the local community and (therefore) retaining the reader’s interest.

Not that there was anything new in the Post-Gazette's news reporting style. Right from journalism school through three newsrooms (the third one of which I was news editor), I had learned that objectivity, relevance, accuracy and fairness were the pillars of any serious journalism.

What struck me at the Post-Gazette was the depth of the accuracy, the objectivity, the fairness, etc. The editors and writers at the paper paid an almost “religious” adherence to these principles. There was zero tolerance for mistakes, basic or serious. I would summarize the important lessons I learned from the Post-Gazette as follows:

• Precision on facts, names of people (initials, middle names, etc.), dates and quotations.
• Being very particular on detailed, precision storytelling.
• The need for thorough research on a particular subject before setting out to pursue a story.
• I also learned (and now fully appreciate) use of the internet for research on various topics.

In short, the quality and depth of reporting at the paper was far above board, and I had to fit into this scheme of things if I were to learn anything and if my stories were to be published. Coming from an entirely different socio-political background and using English as a second language, I found the process of coping with the Post-Gazette’s standards a critical challenge. Even more challenging, at least in the first days, were my telephone interviews with various sources. I had problems understanding American English over the phone, and a good lot of sources found it annoying to be asked to repeat themselves over and over again.

Another lesson I learned from the Post-Gazette was the importance of rigorous editing. The checklist of things to observe before routing your story to the editor was so long it could take several hours to go through it and to implement its provisions. Although I had been a news editor for a national weekly for almost two years, I had always considered editing a light issue. I think I now see it in a different light.

I believe I am a better journalist after my five-month “tour of duty” at the Post-Gazette. It offered me some practical experience with a respected daily which operates on extremely high standards. I realized most of the writers had been on their beats for a decade or two, and were masters in their fields. I had the opportunity to spend time with senior writers and editors discussing various aspects of American journalism. The discussions helped me appreciate the challenges and concerns of U.S. media practice.

If I was kind of mesmerized by most of the things I saw and did in the newsroom, I was also awakened to certain things I had either taken for granted or embraced as gospel truth from my graduate school textbooks. For example, I had all along thought that it was possible to be completely neutral in representing reality as news. But my stint with the Post-Gazette's editorial department served as a kind of eye-opener. In the daily meetings that we held to brainstorm on current issues, I noticed that although different editors had their various approaches to issues of local, national and international debate, there was always an attempt to project a “neutral,” almost clinical, view in the editorial pages. I found most of the editorials boring, but somehow thought that was the norm.

But I was surprised when, in the run-up to the November 5 elections, the paper’s editorials shifted gear to an open campaign for Democratic candidate Ed Rendell. The editorials defended the candidate’s (campaign) policies and outrightly advised voters to vote him into office. And the voters complied, in large numbers!

This interesting experience led me to reflect on my readings of U.S. academics Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman and Robert W. McChesney, all of whom are respected scholars of political economy of the media. In broad general terms, their argument is that most of the U.S. mainstream media (which is commercially funded) will maintain “neutrality”—which is just another way of okaying the dominant view—only in cases where fundamental business concerns are not threatened. Otherwise the whole notion of objectivity is not real!

I am doubtless a better journalist after all these experiences. It is possible to implement some of the lessons I have learned when I go back to Zimbabwe. Zimbabwean newspapers would certainly be better media products with well researched, well written and relevant stories. The zero tolerance for mistakes of any kind that I learned from the Post-Gazette would certainly add value to newspapers in my country. One could successfully implement these lessons in several ways, including in-house training of reporters and tightening reporting standards by increasing the number of items in the reporter’s checklist.

However, one of the most frustrating experiences for an African journalist is to be exposed to a First World newsroom with advanced technology and operating in the context of the First Amendment, to master all the possible skills, only to find out one cannot effectively implement the most important ones back at home. While it would be possible, for example, to improve institutional practices within the newsroom, the bigger issues such as repressive media laws in the country, poor remuneration of journalists occasioned by a tumbling economy and poor technology render it difficult to turn around the news delivery system in a country like Zimbabwe.

These obstacles notwithstanding, I believe the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships program provides an important opportunity for future media leaders in the developing world. In my view, the program should continue running, even recruiting more than just a dozen journalists per year when funds permit. The harsh media laws and economic problems in Africa and some other parts of the world will not last until eternity. An investment in quality journalism could help mobilize local communities against dictatorial regimes, and pave the way for democratic governance which ensures, among other things, media freedom.