One of my personal conceits is that I write fairly well. I'm an amateur, to be sure, but I enjoy it. I've always been able to write: as a kid in school, I used to love "composition" class, when our teachers would give us a topic or hold up a picture and challenge us to make a story out of it. I could do this easily, and my stories were usually given high marks and were read before the class. It was a sort of identity for me: the kid who could write.
As I got older, I began to think about using my writing skills to further my education and perhaps follow a career. I started to think seriously about journalism as my future calling. When the time came, I applied to Western and Ryerson because both schools had well respected programmes in journalism. I went to both schools, with samples of my high school writing in hand, to be interviewed by faculty, tour the facilities and get as much information as I could. It ended up that I went to Western, but didn't follow journalism, choosing instead to study more academic areas and ultimately go into teaching. Oh well …
However, my interest in journalism has never waned. In many of my courses, I had units in journalism, believing firmly that an understanding of media, how it works and its importance in our society was something my young students should know. I also attempted, on several occasions, to launch a school newspaper as an extracurricular activity. It was one of the great thrills of my career to see, with the opening edition of one of the papers, the entire concourse of our school fall silent with students bent over copies of the paper. Later, with the advent of social media, the hard copy paper fell out of favour, despite our best efforts to publicize it and produce interesting reading.
When it's done well, journalism is a form of living history. It chronicles the times in which we live, and provides material for future historians to use as they attempt to understand us. Good journalism, and especially good writing, can do wonderful things for us. It can teach, of course. It can enlighten. It can entertain with its intelligence and discovery. And it can sway us, and make us think of things that we hadn't thought before. I always believed that good journalism is a jewel in the crown of our democratic society: we need independent, intelligent, objective reporting of events and people in order for us to become aware of what goes on in our locales, our country, and our world. Without good journalism, we would be living in complete vacuums, ignorant and dark creatures of fear and superstition.
When journalism is done badly, as it often is, it becomes either a bad joke in our eyes, or a pernicious tool for those who seek to control or manipulate us. It can be propaganda for demagogues and dictators, or an enabler of mindless and childish titillation. It can be a distraction from real and unpleasant issues which require immediate attention, benefitting only those who drive or profit from those unpleasant issues. It can be clumsy, unprofessional, intrusive and, in its worst iteration, a form of semi-pornographic entertainment. When this happens, people often lose respect for the honest journalists who continue to ply their trade with the same conviction as medieval monks on some wind-swept island among the barbarians they're trying to enlighten.
We now exist in a post-journalism world. Social media, in its many forms, is the main source of information for many people. The 24-hour news cycle constantly hammers us with images and slogans that become, after time, mind numbing. People shun paper copies of publications. We read long form copy less than ever. And, as a result, we think less. The open hostility to real journalism, most blatantly shown in the Trump administration, appeals to many people because these people don't want to think: to do so requires effort. They want to feel, to let emotion rule. And the easiest emotion to conjure is fear: the second easiest is anger. Together, these are potent forces for the corrupt and opportunistic to use. And this is exactly what's happening now.
We need good journalism now more than ever. If our democracy is to survive and flourish, we must be willing to read more, regardless the platform we choose to read. And we must think more. For these to happen, we need to encourage young people to choose journalism not just as a career, but as a calling, as sacred as a religious calling. It is democracy's only hope.
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