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.
