A California online community magazine is outsourcing two reporter jobs to India to cover the Pasadena City Council meetings. The journalists will watch the sessions on the Internet, file reports and possibly conduct interviews and even write profiles of local personalities — from Bangalore and Mumbai.
Satirist Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central took this as giving new meaning to an old phrase editors tell their reporters: “I need this story filed yesterday.” (Mumbai is actually 12 1/2 hours ahead of Pasadena, but what the heck, Colbert was on a riff.) Newsweek reported that one Indian reporter would make $12,000 a year, the other $7,200.
As an attention-getting announcement, the decision by editor and publisher James Macpherson on outsourcing the reporting of news was genius; it created a buzz about his small online effort, pasadenanow.com, and it fired up some imaginative responses.
How many readers and reporters believe that news reporting is just about what is said publicly at a council meeting or a press conference?
The daily White House or State Department briefing, for instance, is designed to provide the administration’s view of government policies and to feed the huge appetite of television, radio, newspapers and bloggers for something to say or write every day.
But the usual goal of such briefings is to not make news.
Unfortunately, what comes out of those carefully controlled sessions with the president and other government officials, from a suburban city council or the governor’s office in Springfield, too often passes for news.
Stenography is not news reporting. A court stenographer can tell you precisely every word that was said, but the transcript does not attempt to reveal the emotion and dynamics of the court or to explain how a jury arrived at a decision. In Washington there is a private company, the Federal News Service, that provides transcripts of daily briefings. Reporters often rely on those transcripts instead of sitting around listening to scripted explanations and “spin.” Ideally, they use the saved time to make contact with other sources.
There is a similar issue with what passes for news on TV and the Internet, where there is much discussion about immediacy and packaging of stories. For many viewers and online readers there is a hunger to get someone’s “take” on a topic, their commentary and possible insights.
But for journalists, the commentary and insights should flow out of the depth of reporting and understanding. Some of the best journalists I know are less concerned about deadlines than getting to the heart of a story.
I also know the danger of throwing stones in glass houses. Too often stories in the newspaper are little more than a distillation of what some spokesman said, or the official line from a company president, or a summary of a public event. The Bangalore reporters are more than welcome to those stories.
Serious news reporting is about sources and contacts, about interpretation and analysis. It is also about witnessing, not a passive viewing, but going beneath the surface and understanding what created the developments, events or tension.
I once covered a city council determined to support a large private enterprise with public money. Each week, council members assured citizens there was no danger to the city or public funds. But at least once a week, usually after midnight, one councilman called me at home to reveal what the council decided in private and to explain the danger it posed. Publicly, he joined his colleagues each week in denouncing the reporting. But they all knew what was reported was true.
Good luck on having that relationship from Mumbai.
Every so often, letter-writers blast the Tribune for failing to follow its own style on identifying crime suspects. Those readers claim we are being politically correct and refuse to identify suspects if they are black. That is, of course, ridiculous.
“Descriptions of at-large crime suspects should be as detailed as possible,” according to the stylebook, our guide to writing with consistency. “Race is an important part of a description, but only as one detail out of many. If so few details are available as to make the description useless, do not use it.”
This description from last month, for example, is appropriate: “The suspect is described as African-American, about 18 to 23, 6 foot with a lean build, brown eyes, short black hair and a medium complexion … ” The paragraph went on to describe his clothing.
This description is inappropriate: “Police are seeking a Hispanic man in his 30s.”
My predecessor, Don Wycliff, noted five years ago that sometimes reporters fail to follow the stylebook because of oversight or an excess of caution.
My check of recent years found similar failures but far more examples of appropriate uses, regardless of the suspect’s race.
