21st Century Journalism

What does it mean to be a journalist?

Are journalists watchmen of democracy? Are we the sound of truth? Are we supposed to widen the horizon of knowledge and produce quality information with perfect grammar?

Yes. We are supposed to be and do all that.

But is it really so?

A good friend of mine, and one of the most promising young journalists in Finland, started her summer job in a Finnish paper this summer. After few weeks on the job she was told pretty much to forget what she learned at journalism school. Reality simply doesn’t work like theory.

This of course applies for every field of profession. But in this case ‘forgetting what you have been taught’ meant not really checking your facts and figures (you’re just supposed to know them all) and not caring whether your grammar and language is pleasant and correct: as long as it’s understandable it’s good enough.

Why is that, you might ask. So did I. The answer is simple: there is no time. Working in a busy newsroom or a paper you are supposed to produce text for articles in less than an hour. At that point of course you should have all the information you need. But there is no time for editing or double checking.

I understand that journalism is tough business, but this trend visible in it worries me. We still have responsibility of what we write and publish. In a hectic atmosphere like that, who can really guarantee quality, or even truth?

It seems like papers nowadays don’t care for quality. Journalism is business like any other; the only purpose is to sell. If you can sell with quality journalism, good. But in fierce competition speed and efficiency win accuracy and wide research of information.

It’s not that journalists don’t care about journalism anymore. But they are left with few choices. They too are just employees who want to get paid. And when you want to have a job, you have to roll with it.

This is exactly why I prefer to stay as freelancer. I can decide what I do, when I do it and how. I can double or triple check my information and find as many sources as I feel necessary. Sure the money is never stable, but I’m not in it for money. There is no money in journalism – at least not for journalists.

So what does it really mean to be a journalist? I don’t have the perfect answer, but I will learn while years go by; for sure it’s much more than I imagined before. 

"In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right."

-Ellen Goodman