First Rough Draft of History
November 4th, 2006
Although writing has always been a significant part of my life, I’ve never done anything that could be considered journalism. I’ve never been interested in journalism, probably because I didn’t really understand what it was. I have always associated journalism with newspaper writing: short stories with lots of quotations, no discernable point of view, tight, concise and clipped writing. News. Current events. Boring.
It wasn’t until very recently, actually, that I came to appreciate journalism as something else entirely, as a way of spinning history and relating personal mythologies. A recent assignment allowed me to look at journalism in an entirely different way, and to rethink my lifelong bias against the discipline.
I work for the College of Communication at UT Austin as a web designer, but everybody knows that I really want to write. Recently, I was asked to write a feature story about one of our professors, a photojournalist, for our website. I was excited for the opportunity and also curious about the process; I had never interviewed anyone before. I had no idea what questions to ask, if I’d be able to stay focused enough to ask good follow-up questions, what kind of research I was capable of doing, etc. As I considered the project more clearly, I realized I was being given a journalism assignment when I had not even a mediocre education in the subject. I began to worry.
Actually, that’s not quite true. I started freaking out.
Eventually, however, I came to my senses and began chanting the artist’s cardinal rule: pay attention. In writing a feature story, everything about the interview has the potential to be pertinent information, from the environment, to facial expressions, to what is said, to what isn’t said. If I paid attention to my interviewee as well as our environment and responded appropriately, everything would go well. This realization went a long way toward calming my nerves
What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was how fascinating my interviewee turned out to be. She is a photojournalist who works primarily in post-conflict countries of Latin America, and while at first glance I wouldn’t normally be interested in her work, I couldn’t tear myself away from the stories she told. I was enthralled by her adventures, trials, and victories in Guatemala and Colombia.
And it was at this point that I came to understand at least one aspect of journalism: it isn’t always the news item that’s so compelling, but the people involved. The stories they had to share. The personal interpretation of the world and the things that happen in it. I’ll never be able to hear stories about homeless children in Guatemala again without thinking of this photojournalism professor living among these children, hearing their personal stories, trying to find assistance for them, working with local journalists to heighten awareness of the dire situations the children lived in. I’ll never be able to separate this news story from the very real life history of a woman I have met.
Perhaps I was especially lucky that the first person I interviewed was a journalist herself. My interview with her was a learning experience on many levels. I listened to her talk about her responsibility to other journalists, especially in developing countries where the journalists don’t always have access to good technology, or might not have the freedom or opportunity to publish their findings. I listened to her talk about the importance of helping local journalists find a safe way to speak, which reached right into the heart of my interest in cultural appropriation and cultural sharing. She spoke of the importance of telling stories from an emotional perspective, but not being manipulative, and not interjecting so much of yourself into the story that the story is no longer genuine. And as I listened to her speak, I realized that there was so much I didn’t know about journalism, and how much I could learn to enhance the kind of writing I do every day.
I remember watching Seabiscuit, and telling my husband that if that was the kind of thing I had learned in US history class, I would have gotten so much more out of it. Rather than teaching me about carrying big sticks and the Hawley-Smoot tariff, perhaps history teachers would have been better off telling me what life was like during Prohibition, or the Great Depression. I would have been much more involved in stories about personal triumph, the literature that shaped the era, what people were thinking, doing, rallying for or against. What was the zeitgeist of the era? What were the people about?
I’ve heard journalism described as the first rough draft of history, and I’m now coming to understand what that means, and how relevant that is. If journalists can relay the personal stories of real people that experiences these “news stories”, if journalists can make me care about abstract events by making me care about the people involved, then journalists write the mythologies of the cultures they report on. Journalists shape history, contextualizing daily events through emotional, personal connections. Journalists in this capacity are great storytellers. They create culture carefully, leaving a legacy of personal stories wrapped in the guise of news writing.
Having interviewed my first person and written a feature about her, I find that I have a new appreciation for journalistic-style storytelling. I hope I’ll have the opportunity to work this new skill a bit more.