Journalists tend to be a bit competitive. 

     We live for the scoop. We sometimes go to great lengths to beat another reporter to the story. 

     Meetings in the back booths of diners were not uncommon. Sit with your back to the wall, the old timers said.

     I remember interviewing a cop one evening in the bathroom of the police department with all the faucets running and a reporter from a rival paper listening at the door. 

     But those were the days when two dailies and two weeklies covered even the smallest towns. When every council, planning board, zoning board and board of education meeting found two or three young reporters in the front row with steno pads and Dixon Ticonderoga #2 pencils. When county government was a coveted beat. When cop shop was a stepping stone and everybody lived with a police radio sputtering 24/7.

     We couldn't have imagined a time like today with papers using a machete to enact layoffs. With no coverage at all in even large municipalities. With no one bugging the cops or challenging the freeholders. 

      So maybe we need to suspend our need to catch the first worm and actually work together.

     I'm not talking against good old-fashioned competition, but for the big, investigative stories most newspapers don't have the staff to do the work they used to do. I can remember being sent to Trenton to camp out at office doors or dig through archives for hours. That doesn't happen any more. 

     ProPublica seems to be setting the gold standard for investigative journalism in collaboration with other outlets. Public radio has been doing it the longest. Now other news organizations are figuring out ways to work together.

     The Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University held it's third cooperative journalism summit in Philadelphia last week. Presenters shared stories of cooperative reporting, mostly on the local level. Many of them worked to investigate problems in their communities.

    A Vancouver project explored why indigenous residents were over-represented in the juvenile protective services. A post-Parkland-shooting collaborative paired professional and student journalists. The Denver Uprising combined civic engagement and newsroom collaboration.  

    The CCM is studying different collaborations, measuring the success of various types, and assisting more news organizations in collaborations. 

     It's hard to shake off the old habits of competitiveness, but it helps to remember this isn't varsity sports. It's providing a vital service to the public. And, who knows, maybe a scoop will come your way anyway. 



 

The Illiterate Literati

     I can't believe how long it's been since I actually posted a blog. I used to be pretty regular with them, but, then, life. . .

     But now, it seems necessary.
     
     At the Garden State Scholastic Press Association Spring Advisors Conference, I led a table of teachers and librarians in a discussion of media literacy. Specifically, we talked about how to teach Middle School students the difference between fact and fiction in their daily lives.

     As I write that, it feels very odd. When I was in Middle School -- ok, Junior High in those days when the lava had just cooled -- we knew what was in the Newark Evening News and the Netcong-Stanhope  News and what was on Walter Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley was what actually happened. Propaganda was what the sultry Korean voice talked about on M*A*S*H. There was no propaganda on the homefront. 

     Unless, you count advertising. The Marlboro Man was trying to convince us smoking was sexy. But that was paid for by the tobacco companies and was pretty obvious. 

     Today, adolescents have too much information coming at them from every direction. 

     There are curricula addressing media literacy, but schools don't have the time to do a full semester, so we were looking for solutions that could be incorporated into a standard curriculum. 

     Students need to learn the definition of a primary source and the importance of always seeking that primary source when confronted by any piece of information. They need to learn that social media is a dangerous playground.  

     It's not just kids who repost things without checking. It's more embarrassing when adults do it. 

     The bottom line is never post anything that doesn't indicate where it comes from. That seems to be a no-brainer, but, I'm finding it is. Never post anything from a source you don't recognize as a reputable news source. Never post anything from a blatantly partizan source. Especially when it's partizan leaning toward the way you lean, because you are less likely to hold any objectivity. 

     Reinforcing your own and others' prejudices is the most dangerous part of the this dangerous game. 

     I will periodically blog about other topics we addressed at GSSPA and during other media literacy conversations.