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Writing the Next Chapter
Rebuilding a journalistic identity*
I’m not one of those journalists.
Maybe you know the ones.
They’ve won prestigious awards or have a string of big-name outlets they’ve published in or teach journalism at a prestigious university or spent a decade covering crime or science.
The ones I envy.
I used to think I’d be one of them someday.
It wasn’t the prestige I wanted, though, let’s face it, that’d be nice.
I had originally wanted to do criminology and criminal justice research that would be used to prevent suffering due to crime. I came to believe I could do more good as a journalist, bringing the research of others to the world with my reporting.
Journalism, as embodied in The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, appealed to the young idealist I was and captured my imagination: journalism’s first obligation being the truth, its first loyalty being citizens, its being a discipline of verification… All of it.
What I wanted was to do good journalism that would facilitate change and development in criminal justice policy. I figured that those markers I mentioned above — the awards, the publishing credentials, the teaching gigs, the experience — would indicate I’d succeeded.
I think I showed some promise back at the beginning. I was a smart and decent writer. I had some good ideas that turned into good stories. After an undergraduate degree in Criminal Justice & Public Policy where I also wrote for and edited the news section of the campus newspaper, I went to j-school at a decent college, went back and edited my university campus newspaper, then went to work as a reporter/photographer at a community weekly newspaper.
The plan was to start working my way up from smaller papers to larger papers, gaining general assignment reporting experience before transitioning to science reporting, and then finally to a gig specializing in covering criminology and criminal justice research.
Things should have been looking up.
