After being a reporter going on three years, finding a subject to tackle for a column can be a fairly daunting task.
Granted, I write a music column for Pulse, but music and entertainment are two of my hobbies, unlike reporting, which I hope to turn into a career.
The ethical importance of remaining neutral and objective — in my opinion — is of paramount importance. It’s not my place to comment on the news. That belief endures whether I have written about an issue or not, from the ASUO and the Oregon University System’s higher education budget to Congressman Gary Condit or President George W. Bush’s policy on whatever.
That’s news, and I’m a newsman. It’s just that simple.
Not that columnists have an easier job than reporters, just a very different job. Both, when done well, require research, strong, punchy sentences, and an ability to reflect the constantly changing world.
But this doesn’t negate the fact that I have an opinion. I simply refuse to ever risk undermining readers’ ability to believe that when I inform them about an issue, event or person, the information is coming to them without a personal slant.
I hold to this defining principle so strongly that, despite my sarcastic sensibilities, I won’t even opine on the AP story in Tuesday’s Oregon Daily Emerald about the dead anchovies in a Brookings harbor.
So wow, that kills a lot of topics. No current events, religion, politics, the importance or lack thereof of student government — and plenty of my views on entertainment appear later in this issue.
That pretty much leaves the weather, and I’m simply not going to write an opinion piece about the weather. Technically, I can’t do that anyway. On Tuesday I wrote a story about this week’s heat spell and open waterways on the Willamette. That’s the minute level to which I take my objectivity.
How ’bout them Mariners?
Cynical — and quite broad — opinions abound that nobody in the news business is objective. Every word spewed from a reporter’s head into his or her computer comes equipped with some kind of political or ideological slant.
Sure, corporations play a bigger part in today’s news media, and the sharp decline of two-newspaper cities lowers competition and thus the tenacity of investigative and thorough reporting. But the situation is far from bleak.
And my principles are in no way unique. I simply consider first my objectivity and the obligations that come with the privilege of newswriting whenever I make a choice in this business.
This fall, I’ll travel to Washington, D.C., for a political reporting internship. Although I don’t expect the atmosphere to change my journalistic ideals drastically, I do expect to have my concept of reporting challenged and fine-tuned.
Little effort is needed to sit at a college newspaper independent from the University administration and vow a willingness to fall on my sword for journalistic integrity.
Maybe all of this is so important to me because journalism is more than a career; it can become your life. I adore the classic images of reporters jumping out of bed at 2 a.m. to cover a breaking story or spending hours researching and digging for investigative work. This isn’t just how I act on the job — it’s how I live my life.
If only I had a topic for this column.