Dead trees, blogs and The Truth
"What's the most recent book you've read?" The question took me by
surprise, coming at the end of my presentation about newspapers,
magazines and the role of photographs as "reporting" or "illustration," from Civil War battlefield photos to Fark.com.
What with all the e-mail, academic journals, online newspapers and
weblogs and microfilm of 80-year-old newspapers, do I still read books?Well,
yes. But it even took me a minute (staring blankly is a such a good
job-interview technique) to get out the name of Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs, which I reviewed for Newspaper Research Journal last month. (I didn't mention The Making of American Audiences, because I'm not done with it yet. Early disappointed comment: It's mostly about live theatre and TV audiences, not readers.)
Thanks to the airline flight home from that job interview
I have another recently-read book to add to the list -- and to
recommend highly to prospective journalists or webloggers, Terry Pratchett's The Truth.
I like the coincidence that I've been doing research into a magazine-like, eccentric newspaper
that almost used "The Truth" as its name too, although it didn't have
problems with photographers turning into dust because they were
light-sensitive vampires. (They may have been ghoulish, but not
vampires.)
Pratchett's story takes place in a fantasy world I'd never
visited, but the setting felt comfortable quickly enough, trolls,
goblins, golems and all. Is that because I worked for a newspaper, or
because halloween is coming? By having dwarves and that vampire photographer start a
newspaper as a whole new idea, Pratchett has a fresh setting to paint a
both satirical and idealistic picture of journalism. I laughed out loud
more than once, which isn't something you get to do that often at the
Newark airport. I think it would be a terrific book to start
journalism students (and bloggers) talking about journalism. In an
interview (linked to his name above), Pratchett summed it up: "How did
some guy, because he had access to a notebook and a printing press,
have all this power? It's really very strange. Who are you answerable
to when you are working on a newspaper? Who can give you orders? Where
is your responsibility? What is the truth and do you know it when you
see it?" Those are good questions for webloggers, journalists and readers...
Back at my job interview, perhaps the question someone should
have asked me was, "what magazines do you subscribe to, or read
regularly?" The job in question includes teaching about magazines,
which would be a first for me. However, I suspect the magazine links on
my home page answered that question before I got there.
Even lawyers?
Yes, even lawyers came out higher in status
than journalists in a recent poll, but reporters are still ahead of
stockbrokers, bankers and actors... no matter how many of them get
elected governor.
Just in time to help the profession out, New England finally has an accredited journalism school, and it turns out to be at my alma mater in Storrs, Conn.
1:30:14 AM 
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