Category: journalism

When Does The Reporter Matter?

I had a great discussion today about when it is appropriate for a reporter to share their perspective and when it isn’t, and what gets lost in the middle.

Have you seen Restrepo? I watched it before I went to Iraq. I knew what I would be going to do would be far different, but it was eye-opening and daunting to see just a month before my trip.

But ultimately it was disappointing. I didn’t think it told the story as powerfully as I expected. In a few weeks of covering war reporters send back stories about firefights and death. After a year with these soldiers I was expecting an opus. In that respect the film fell flat.

Now I haven’t read War, the book-version of the movie. Perhaps the written word caught what the video couldn’t.

I did, however, read The Forever War, an immensely powerful book that floored me page by page. It isn’t an opinion-free report from the front lines. It is full of emotion, and deadness inside, that tells a different story than the battlefield reports.

Is that what reporters are supposed to do? Are they supposed to give you the feel of the place, or just report the facts? What I came back from Iraq with was far more in depth than what made it into my radio reports. This blog, in fact, got more of a taste of what the real Iraq (that I saw, and as I understood it) was.

I guess that’s what I expect from the best reporting, but it isn’t something I yet feel comfortable doing. This American Life, for example, gets beyond what the story is into its meaning. The best reporting by The New York Times or The New Yorker does too. But that isn’t something reporters can take lightly. To get beyond the facts, so people can understand the story, is not easy. It isn’t everyday journalism. It’s far too easy to become partisan at that point, to tell the story from a liberal or conservative viewpoint that in fact does no one any good. But that’s what real journalism does — it takes the reader, viewer, listener to whatever the story is and really brings them it. It helps them to understand what it is they are learning, and what it really means.

I think about all the stories I read and saw and heard about Iraq before I went there, and about how little I understood when I landed. That was because too much of the journalism world is about the simple facts, instead of delving into the complex ones. Complexity doesn’t fit well into a half-hour news cast, but it is the way of the world. It is what reporters must tackle, and at the same time do it fairly.

It’s a documentarian perspective, brought to the mainstream. Don’t just tell people. Help them understand.

News, and paying for it.

The New York Times is charging. The world’s greatest newspaper (regardless of how The Chicago Tribune bills itself as) has gone behind a paywall. NYTimes.com has always been my go-to source for almost any story bigger than New Hampshire. It is the paper of record, as far as I am concerned. It’s homepage is bookmarked on every browser and every computer I use, and I’ve been going there for years.

And to think all that time I’ve been paying nothing.

I know, journalism is everywhere. We’ve come to think of it like water—it just comes out of the tap. For free. We seldom think of the infrastructure that makes it possible, of the value it contains.

Until someone starts bottling it.

My job and my future rest on the Times experiment working. Journalism jobs are hard to come by, and they aren’t paying quite what they used to. People can advertise online for less than they can in print, and many times the results are the same if not better. Papers (like mine in particular—a free daily) count on advertisers to fund reporting far more than the subscription price. As ad sales have dropped so has investment in journalism, which hurts readership, which further hampers ad sales.

And all I want to do is get out there and find out the facts…

The Times is trying to capture some of that online revenue that is otherwise evaporating. Who can blame them? They can’t give away something for nothing.

Several weeks ago New Hampshire Public Radio was holding their pledge drive, and I was reexamining my spending. I had subscribed to Netflix a few months before. I was paying $8 a month for access to streaming movies I generally didn’t care about. That’s $100 a year.

If access to crappy movies is worth $100 a year, what is excellent journalism worth?

I donated $150 to NHPR. I figure I’ll get some of it back in the end anyway…

The Times is charging between $15 and $35 a month for access to their website, depending on how you access it. That’s between $180 and $420 a year. Is The Times worth that? I would say it is, or at least that it’s worth $180 a year. I wouldn’t be interested in paying $420 a year, but I am living on a reporter’s pay.

The question, however, is whether everyone will pay, and whether the model can support Times-quality journalism in the future.

Hanging With Mitt

Mitt Romney was in the Mount Washington Valley tonight, criticizing President Barack Obama and laying the groundwork for a 2012 presidential bid. The New York Times, among other media outlets, was there to report. I was bumping into photographers, television reporters and other print journalists who were all there trying to capture the moment.

It’s a bit surreal to watch the horserace begin this early. I have not lived through a New Hampshire primary, so I haven’t seen this before. It won’t be as lively as 2008, when there were two parties nominating candidates, but there will likely be rhetoric to spare.

The more reporting I do the less I understand partisanship. I have political views, but they aren’t convictions. I don’t believe them to be true. I feel one way, but I don’t think it’s the only valid model. I studied political science in college, but as I get into it now I realize reporting on this race or any like it is not the journalism that excites me. It isn’t shining a light into places where no one else is going, and while there is room for insightful reporting I don’t think I’m the one to do it. It’s certainly interesting to be in a room with a past and future presidential candidate, a U.S. House representative and a U.S. senator, but that isn’t the coverage for me. I don’t like races, particularly ones that go on for years. I guess that’s good to figure out now.

Muckraking

Every once in a while you get to do a story you’re really proud of. It isn’t about the quality of the photos, or the interesting video you captured, or the interesting audio you put together. In those stories, it’s the reporting that matters.

This is one of those stories.

I dug around a little and found out the Conway Police Department had been spending their surplus money on equipment. They had blown their $4,000 equipment budget by more than 500 percent one year, and by more than 200 percent another, spending money that otherwise would have gone back to the town to offset taxes.

The moment I looked at the budget breakdowns I realized I had something. It was like seeing an old friend—I smiled so hard I almost laughed. It isn’t that I think they police were wasting taxpayer money—they didn’t buy anything not intended for police business—but I knew in this economic climate it wasn’t going to go over well that they were spending $20,000 or more in the last few days of the year.

Digging is something you do in your spare time at a paper the size of the Sun. There are too few people and too much going on to really be dedicated to it. But there are more staff at the Sun than there were at the Reporter, and more people look to this paper to address their concerns since it’s the only one in town.

I’ve received several calls from readers thanking me for reporting on this. People wonder where I got the information and who the insiders was. One of the police commissioners wanted to know the same thing. But the entire story was built from the town finance records and the police commission meeting minutes. It isn’t a big conspiracy, it’s just putting the puzzle pieces together.

But what’s next is even better. This is phase one, but since I’ve been looking around I found phase two. There is more in store for the next installment, just wait.

Almost Back

I’ve been home for nearly a week, and it still doesn’t feel like I’m back. Things have been so busy, with catching back up at the Conway Daily Sun to side projects to stepping back into life it’s been hard to catch my breath. But I’ve got a lot of great things going on.

Already I’ve been looking at another international story: Egypt. A friend put me in touch with an American woman who stayed behind, so I’m talking to her today to see if I can get her on the radio. That story has been exploding over the past two weeks and is only now settling down, but it still has serious implications. I’m interested to hear the American perspective.

Then, of couse, there are the local politics playing out in the Conway area. It’s interesting to shift from international reporting to talking about who is supposed to clear the sidewalks. My mind hasn’t quite done it, but I’m getting there.

And I’m definitely looking for my next big project. I’m not sure what or where, but I do know that covering something in the manner I did this story is incredibly rewarding. I will keep doing it, I just need to figure out how.

Adrift

So I touched down in Baghdad an hour or so ago, thinking I was right on schedule to get my paperwork together and get my press ID. I called the press information center, and they thought I was flying to a different airport. I’m not exactly sure how that happened, because I was on the military plane they scheduled, but apparently that kind of mix-up happens. So now I’m sitting in an internet cafe (I can’t get the wireless on my laptop) waiting to call the press center back to see what I’m supposed to do next.

In the meantime, I have to say the C-130 I flew in on was an experience. Earplugs, bulletproof vest and helmet, lying on the seats made of one inch flat webbing. No window, no tray tables, minimal climate control. Enter through the rear bay door, and watch the landing gear go down through the little window.

I talked to another U.S. soldier who said he didn’t think there would be much of Iraq left if the U.S. leaves. That’s been the overwhelming opinion of the people I’ve talked to thus far. Not very encouraging, considering troops are scheduled to leave in one year.

OK, I’ve got to make a phone call or two to see if I’m sleeping in an airport or if I’ll find a bunk and some dinner. Wish me luck.

What To Expect?

I’m one flight away from Iraq, and I’ve still got no idea what to expect or what I’ve gotten myself into. Today’s Stars and Stripes reported an Iraqi shot and killed two soldiers in Mosul. The Iraqi brought live rounds to a security training exercise — they were all supposedly on the same side.

I sat next to a contractor on the plane from London who was former military. He’s been over here two and a half years. He’s working in Basra now, he said, where things can be quiet for a long time but then get loud real fast. Around Thanksgiving, he said, insurgents shelled the base all the time. But he doesn’t wear a bulletproof vest, he said. He’s never more than a few seconds from a bunker, which is all the time he needs.

The National Guardsmen who run the shuttle from the airport said it’s nowhere near what it was — it used to be “the Wild West with explosives,” on of them said. Now it’s much more tame, but there still might be shelling.

I’m interested to see. It’s now Operation New Dawn, supposedly no longer war. I wonder if the soldiers in FOB Kalsu (I finally learned how to pronounce it: Kal-SU) feel that way. If I have to dive into a bunker to avoid getting blown up I think I’d call that war, but who knows if I’ll have to.

I’m surrounded by soldiers who I could ask, but I’m not supposed to engage in reporting without a Public Affairs Officer accompanying me. That’s why my photos stopped at the airport. I’m not sure what’s considered snapshots and what would be considered violating the embedding agreement. I’m playing it safe — there are a lot of guns around here!

Thirty Hours Later…

…I’m in Kuwait.

I got to watch two sunrises yesterday — one in Massachusetts and one in the Middle East. From Boston to London I watched Avatar (for the first time — it’s not exactly a powerful experience on a four inch screen) and Salt, and I completely missed the day. By the time we landed in London it was 7 p.m. and completely dark.

I searched around for a power plug in Heathrow, which I found, but I nearly missed my flight because I was more worried about power than planes.

That was another six hour flight, not nearly as cush as the one from Boston. I spent it sleeping poorly and trying to watch the Town, about the place I’d left that morning.

I landed in Kuwait City at 6 a.m., 10 p.m. back home, and watched the sun rise over the haze. It wasn’t warm. I needed a sweater under my jacket as I waited for the shuttle to Ali Al Salem air base.

I missed the military check in station inside the airport, so I stood outside on the street corner where the locals said the shuttle stopped. I was out there about three hours before it arrived to pick up a half dozen soldiers and contractors on their way to the same place.

I sat next to a National Guardsman from Michigan who was part of the shuttle service. It was his first deployment, he said, but he thinks when U.S. soldiers leave the region is going to fall apart. Probably get overrun by Iran, he said. Even Kuwait would get overrun if the U.S. didn’t maintain a military presence.

We stopped at the military side of the Kuwait Airport to switch from the shuttles to a full sized bus. In the distance I could make out a huge fire, probably a half mile off or more. I asked the four men running the shuttles what it was. “Who knows,” one of them said. “Something’s always burning here.”

It was an hour ride on the bus to Ali Al Salem air base. A Chevy Suburban escorted it, and one uniformed soldier rode with us. “If we take on small arms fire I have a sidearm,” he told the nearly empty bus, “and I’ll be taking orders from my CC in the SUV.”

I do not understand all the military acronyms, but SUV I got. (Crew chief maybe — that was my guess.)

We didn’t take any small arms fire, but it was in my head the whole drive. It didn’t keep me from looking out the window, however, for almost the entire trip.

The bus was lined with dark blue curtains. I sat where they split and held them apart, watching the country slide by. Desolate. Burnt.

Trees lined the road, but otherwise is was sand to the horizon, split by fences. Plastic bags stuck in the trees and against the chain-link, like moths in a spiders web. High-tension wires crisscrossed the landscape. About halfway through the trip we passed a collection of tents, Bedouin style, on both sides of the road. Thousands of them. On one hill was a radio tower, surrounded by armaments and what looked like rocket launchers. The bus sped on.

At Ali Al Salem I checked in with the civilian authority, lined up my flight for the next morning and got a bunk in a tent with a dozen other men. No one seemed prepared for someone without a military or contractor ID, but the letters I got from USF– Iraq were good enough to clear that hurdle. I lined up my flight into Baghdad tomorrow, found my bed and flopped down. Two sunrises, eight time zones and 6,500 miles later, I was finally getting some sleep. It was one in the afternoon.

Bag, CHECK, and Bag Check

I got my bar of soap everything else I need, and I’m in Logan’s international terminal waiting to get on British Airways flight 238. It’s 7 a.m., and as you can see the sunrise is spectacular.

I picked up a new backpack last night that fits all my reporting equipment perfectly, and my checked bag was 45 lbs., well under the limit.

It was -2 degrees outside at 4 a.m. when I got in the car to drive here. When I came through security I got to go around the full body scanner that’s caused such a commotion in recent weeks, but they did have to pull apart my backpack. It was carefully packed so all three of my microphones, both my cameras and both my audio recorders fit. When they saw that on the screen they let me know they were going to have to pull it apart (as I knew they would). Luckily it was 6 a.m., so the security checkpoint wasn’t crazy.

There’s nothing like an airport on a Saturday morning. Aside from the occasional threat level announcement (currently orange) the mellow pop music combines with the constant stream of CNN, conspiring to lull me to sleep.

I figured out that while I’m landing in Kuwait at 6 a.m. tomorrow, to me it’s going to feel like 10 p.m. tonight. I’m interested to see how my body deals with that. I’m going to be on an “overnight” flight from London to Kuwait at what should feel like the late afternoon. Yum.

OK, I’m even more on my way. The next three days will be more of the same, because it won’t be until 5:30 p.m. Monday that I get to Baghdad, and then the following day when I get to FOB Kalsu. But I have a friend in Kuwait and a reserve unit in Baghdad to visit with, so none of it should be too bad. I even have friends in the U.K. I’d love to see, but I don’t have 24 hours there. So we’ll see what I come across in the next 72 hours.

Smile

I’m officially on my way. I’ve left my house, so hopefully I’ve got everything I need. I grabbed a quick shot of myself, bulletproofed up with Mount Washington in the background, for NHPR. I have to admit, if I can make this happen in the long-term, coming home to northern New Hampshire while reporting from around the world, then I’ll have found the perfect lifestyle.

I’ve still got to get that soap, and I’ve got to make sure my luggage weighs less than 50 lbs., but otherwise I’m ready to go. And since I’ve left home for the last time before my feet hit sand I feel I’ve officially started the journey.

Now I just need to capture sound and shots along the way…