Ever since I graduated in August my approach to finding jobs has been a bit atypical; I figured I didn’t want to do a dead-end job, so I just started emailing places I liked asking if I could come work for them. Though this process has yet to land me a job (or even a volunteer experience, as I also told companies I’d work for free), it did get me one interview.
The interview I landed was with KUER in Salt Lake City for the position of intern-reporter. However, having essentially no journalism experience I didn’t get this position. Still, the interview was a good experience; I got to meet Jennifer Napier-Pearce (she interviewed me) and see the studio where Radio West is made (both of which experiences are things I would have driven to Salt Lake to do even if I wasn’t trying to get a job).
This interview was definitely a learning experience for me, but one part of the exchange in particular stands out. Ms. Pearce asked me what sorts of stories I’d be most interested in covering. I wanted to say, “ANYTHING BECAUSE BEING A REPORTER WOULD BE AWESOME AND I’M DESPERATE TO GET A JOB IN JOURNALISM” (in caps because I would have been yelling it). I actually said, “I’d be interested in covering a variety of topics, though right now I’m probably best equipped to cover arts and culture….”
In retrospect my answer was definitely not what KUER needed, which fact was demonstrated by Ms. Pearce’s answer: “…we cover more hard news than soft news” (that’s not word for word, but you get the gist). I probably visibly spaced out at that moment because I immediately began mentally analyzing the distinction between these two genres of journalism. What exactly makes something “hard” or “soft” for example? Who determines that? Just how aware are journalists of the (subjective) hierarchies they create when lumping some event into these categories?
Since then I’ve thought a lot about this hard news/soft news distinction. On the surface, this is a fairly obvious dichotomy. For example crime rates, politics, or scientific discoveries are easily classifiable as hard news. On the other hand, Paris Hilton’s latest hijinks are clearly less important. Said another way, some stories impact public wellbeing (hard news) and others merely boost ratings, provide entertainment, or move newspapers (soft news).
Still, that distinction places a lot of responsibility on the journalist and the categories do blur. Murders and petty crimes might have a correlation, for example, blurring the line between important and less-important stories. Or, a newspaper might discover that reporting on murders results in higher sales, so the editor chooses to disproportionately report on violence, blurring the line between public well being and sensation. In any case, hard news and soft news aren’t black and white categories and a journalist wouldn’t get anything done if she or he didn’t make some decisions about what to report.
Which is all fair enough; journalists obviously have to choose between legitimacy and sensationalism. Yet on a deeper level these decisions perhaps need reevaluation. For example, though most people would probably agree that stories about Paris Hilton are less important than stories about Barack Obama, that doesn’t nessecarily have to be the case. We as a society could decide that the most important value we share is our love of pop culture (and indeed the advent of infotainment suggests that we might). However, what if pop culture actually was more important. Imagine, for example, that someone started a religion that worshipped celebrities. Imagine we all belonged to that religion and truly believed in it. Suddenly the actions of people like Paris Hilton would mean something very different. If that’s too far-fetched (it shouldn’t be, really) imagine if Jesus Christ came back to earth as per the beliefs of most Christian denominations. He’d certainly be a celebrity worthy of biographical and human interest stories, but he’d also probably be fair game as hard news (especially if he did all that stuff the Bible says he’ll do).
My point is that the classification of certain stories as “soft news” or infotainment actually devalues things that might have immense cultural significance. While the Paris Hilton and Jesus Christ examples are extreme ones that I’m using rhetorically here, the issue does raise questions about the arts, music, cinema and all those things that don’t create new laws or inventions, but nevertheless inflect the way people behave (more than most hard news topics too). Where do these things rank compared to something like a state legislature, which is surely hard news but much less present in people’s lives than someone like Angelina Jolie? In other words, are arts and culture important? Are they hard news? Why?
In the end I largely agree with the distinctions between hard news and soft news (though I can’t help but wonder why I was told that KUER reports on hard news right after I had said I wanted to report on the arts). Still, simply because something seems to work doesn’t mean we should take it for granted. Hard news may be hard for a reason, but I still think it’s worth asking why it is.
This four minute video shows some of the problems inherent in the split. I agree with Miller's stance about what should be done.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/alisa_miller_shares_the_news_about_the_news.html
That's cool. Since when did you want to become a journalist?
ReplyDeleteI thinks it's interesting Napier-Pearce said what she did, because KUER tends to just read its "hard news" in small capsules. That's all they really have time for, because they have relatively little space in between segments of Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Any real stories they produce typically tend to be human interest stories, which I think generally tend to lean toward the "soft" category, if we are classifying. Sure, they may be interesting and informative (not trite), but it isn't what I would call "hard." And even their stories that relate to hard news are done in a manner that tends to soften them. It's more exploring the hard news that was broken long ago.
Anyway, they should have hired you to replace that lady they have on the air on Saturday mornings. How she got that job I'll never know.
I've wanted to be a journalist ever since I realized that I needed to get job and that my strongest skill was writing. I also follow the news and that sort of thing, so it seemed like a good fit. Unfortunately, I am not yet a journalist, or anything else for that matter.
ReplyDeleteAnd as far as KUER's hard/soft news reporting, I may well have misunderstood the intent of the comment. I've also heard a fair amount of "soft news" on the station, but perhaps she was referring to what I'd be doing specifically. I don't know, but either way it gave me experience with the types of questions I'll get asked in interviews.