Journalism 1 vs. Journalism 2, and local reporting
Thoughts on the field and what readers expect
By Darren Johnson
Journal & Press
Last night, I taught my first Journalism II class of the semester. As a prerequisite, all of the students had taken Journalism I before, with me.
(The courses are officially called Writing & Reporting the News I and II at the college I work for, but most other schools I’ve worked for call them Journalism I and II, or Journalism 101 and 102. So, to simplify, I will call the courses by their more common names.)
I rarely teach Journalism II. Most colleges are happy enough offering Journalism I, especially if they don’t have a full-fledged journalism program.
But what’s taught in Journalism II is what most lay people think of when they think of a “journalist.” In class, I outlined the differences between the styles of writing each course teaches.
Journalism I:
Writing Who, What Where, When
Inverted Pyramid (stories with the most important information up top, because most people don’t read the whole article)
Uses AP Style (an easy to learn formula for writing clearly and concisely)
Typically 600-800 word stories
Profile stories are good practice
Often stories only use a single source
Minimal fact checking needed
Minimal research needed
Little controversy/adversity
Live interviews mostly taken at face value
Journalism II:
Writing Who, What Where, When — also How and Why
A more balanced, storytelling style — it should be a good read with equal quality beginning to end
Less Spartan than AP Style; more adjectives, writerly
1200-2000+ word stories
Often Investigative and Explanatory Journalism
Use multiple sources
Thorough fact-checking
Various forms of deep research may be needed
Topic may not be "comfortable," may be controversial for some
Interviews conducted in numerous ways; reporter should be approachable but also skeptical, as needed
So, you can see, these are quite different courses, at least the way I teach them.
A person could just learn the tenets of Journalism I, either in a class or on their own, and have a whole career in community journalism.
Weekly papers like my The Greenwich Journal and The Salem Press for the most part have always lived in the world of Journalism I, for over a century each.
The readers are happy with that. If we venture too deep into Journalism II, the stories don’t get much buzz, or they may even get complaints as being too negative or judgmental.
If a small paper is interested in winning journalism awards, they should at least once a year put out a Journalism II-style investigative or explanatory series, even if the local readers don’t care that much about it.
Such stories may be sweeping in nature; for example, in class we looked at a Pulitzer Prize winning series on the illegal use of immigrant child labor in the US. Students thought perhaps a series on the growth of regional hard drug use and its effect on the college residential population could be a good investigative/explanatory avenue to pursue for the school paper.
You can see how, while such stories may shed light on important issues, and may even lead to exposed government leaders being pressured to fix the problem, such pieces may not work for a small community paper whose financial future ultimately hinges on people feeling good about the community in which they live.
The other aspect is, small town papers may not have enough staff to devote to Journalism II type stories, which are more labor intensive and take away one’s time from reporting the more everyday topics most people actually want to read about. Profiles of interesting people, non-profits, businesses, sports and the arts.
Journalism II stories are typically associated with daily papers, which have a larger regional market and can afford to anger people in one town or the next. They’ll get over it.
However, daily papers have largely contracted, and if they were to be honest with themselves, they’d have to admit most such papers are almost wholly putting out Journalism I stories today.
Not that one type of story is necessarily better than the next — are 10 Journalism I stories more valuable than the one exposé a reporter could have written in the same amount of time?
If you were a baseball coach, would you rather have an everyday player who hits 10 singles and doubles, or a backbencher who comes in occasionally for a single at bat, but can hit a home run?
A big paper could afford to hire both types, but a smaller paper can’t afford to carry a backbencher; as well, there may be a resentment in small towns toward “big-city” style journalism. So the small papers that become too metro lose readers if they stray from their mission of basic community reporting. There’s also a resentment on staff toward the Journalism II-style writer who isn’t in the daily trenches with them.
But journalism movies are almost wholly about the tenacious mavericks, who may even wear flak jackets that say “PRESS” on them.
While I had written several Journalism II style pieces when younger, and I know I still have the ability to pull it off — else, I wouldn’t teach the subject — time is my biggest constraint. Such stories are best told by people who can devote themselves fully to the subject, not the people who have to worry about editing, layout, distribution and selling ads — and teaching the subject. That, and I don’t care about winning journalism awards.
You usually don’t know the last time you’ll do something, and I wonder if I’ll accomplish, say, a multi-part, 8000-word journalistic series ever again.
Oddsmakers would say no, but part of me keeps that hope alive.
My birthday is coming up. If you’d like to order me one of those cool flak jackets as encouragement, I’m currently running large.