Which story? To sell or to tell?

 Which story? To sell or to tell?

W

hen deadlines arrive without having a byline know your headline has no lifeline.

By MUSYOKA NGUI

Field can be a very interesting and challenging arena at the same time. Doors are opened and slammed in equal measures. Sources can be generous yet mean. Open and secretive.

Actually, field reporting is not something you learn in college because they do not teach it in the first place.

No one teaches you how to steal evidence. Yet the editor doesn’t want stories he wants page ones. When deadlines arrive without having a byline know your headline has no lifeline.

Dispatches from field must arrive fast and furious yet factual. Pressure of delivery is midwived by the pleasure of technology which is a game changer.

Dilemmas are abound. Which story do we report? The one that is easy or the hard one? Whose interests should we prioritize? The reader or the advertiser?

After college I realize that some theories were a waste of time. We were taught you should not write a headline as a question. But the Nairobian is asking readers questions and it is claimed to sell more copies over the weekend than the two leading local dailies.

In the streets I see people clutching the Nairobian and shunning “serious” papers. Who is a journalist to decide what is appropriate and what is chatter? Is he a moralist?

I understand there is need for editing a paper for the family but when an editor assumes that the adults are minors who need to be protected it leaves many questions unanswered.

I bet the safe way to present editorial material is to give every side of story as humanely possible and leave the audience to judge and crucify the content. You cannot go wrong that way. Self-censorship is a culprit in silencing the truth and making reporters accomplices in covering up sleaze, moral decadence and basically it is what happens when strange bedfellows go to bed without editorial foreplay as some panelist put it in NTV’s Presspass, a media watchdog show.

While opinion is like an a** and everyone has one, I believe any journalist who kills a story must have power to resurrect bland one from a clueless reporter who hasn’t mastered the art of tying the loose ends and encourage her to do better.

“I got published” is one of the rarest expressions from struggling journalists who still are pushing envelopes without headway.

The public interest overrides all the ethical codes and it should be the compass that guides editorial judgment. At the end of the day, tell the story in public interest not in vested interest.