I saw myself taking a questionable assignment and prying open a window to get to the files that would finally put away that dirtbag politician. I would drag the hegemony down by blasting it with the holy light of journalism!
I quickly figured out that I knew nothing of journalism. Everything Hunter S. Thompson taught me about reporting was wrong. With no experience and little functional knowledge in the field, my first two submissions were rapidly rejected. The world of journalism — especially college journalism — is full of obscure rules. Brought upon me with the most immediate rigor was the first-person rule: Nothing in a story is to be written in first person.
To me, this is counter-intuitive. The truth, to me, is always subjective. You’ve heard the saying, “There are three sides to any story: your side, my side and the truth.” Well, I don’t endorse it. There are two truths in the story: your truth and mine. Alas, I faced further refusal of my work. It turns out the truth cannot be interviewed, so at least three tangible sources are required.
In journalism, we collect every available side of the story but our own. We attempt to piece it together. It’s all part of the ethical code that represents an apparently altruistic attempt at objective honesty. It seems to me, though, that we’re just giving other people’s stories, and disjointedly at that.
In our attempt to be consistently honest — that is, to report the truth — we gather hundreds of words and use only dozens. With limited space and time, we relegate the telling of a story to the presentation of a few facts, in order of most arbitrarily important to least. Then, by telling it as if we weren’t there, we pretend we had nothing to do with it.
Albert Einstein claimed that we couldn’t observe something without influencing it, and I have no grounds to argue against this claim. So, if we’re part of the action, how can we omit ourselves from the story? And where’s the rum?!
Still, the experience of working for the Daily Lobo has taught me more than how to shape stories according to AP format. It has helped me significantly in my other authorial endeavors.
I am grateful for the lessons in wordsmithing and for the marvelous people that I’ve met — even if they don’t have overflowing ashtrays in front of them. Coming first to mind are Jyllian Roach, the editor-in-chief who has helped me to reframe my perception so often that I can now tolerate this madness, and J.R. Oppenheim, the managing editor whose dry candor and infallible logic suggest to me that he understands how ridiculous it all is, but insists on maintaining the illusion.
I cannot force myself to list the people of the paper that I hold in high regard. Walk into the newsroom and any face you see surely belongs to an admirable being. To those brave souls I say, “Go forth and forge new rules. Bend the tyranny of tradition until it snaps, so the truth can be told. Lest we ever be made to use the words of others to half-tell our tales. Sisters and brothers of the mother: language, we be.”
Kevin Haaf is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
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