Tuesday, October 30, 2007 Malig: Local journalism By Jun A. Malig Cognition
“I DON’T usually read Pampanga newspapers,” a distant relative told me some months ago, “they just show pictures and stories about rich politicians.” I didn’t have a ready response to his comment. I didn’t bother asking what made him think that way. So I just smiled, realizing that people have different levels of expectation, depending on their values, experience and orientation.
It’s not easy to become a print journalist these days, especially now that a growing number of people seem to be losing their trust in the media. The trend is not limited in our country or in Pampanga, in particular. It’s currently a main concern among journalists worldwide.
In the province, it’s soothing to know that there are still a few colleagues who advocate quality reporting in the local setting.
“Local newspapers may not become like the Inquirer or the Star but they surely can be something like the Angeles Sun or the Currents,” an older colleague once told me while we were discussing the state of print journalism in Pampanga. But, of course, many younger (or newer) “reporters” nowadays, especially the ones who never worked as full-time correspondents for major national dailies, would probably be clueless on this topic.
They are also stranger to the daily struggle of a Pampanga-based correspondent as he competes with reporters and other correspondents in other cities and provinces for the limited space in the newspaper, as only relevant stories are usually being accommodated, most especially when news reports have to compete with advertisements.
Such working condition normally transforms most correspondents of major national dailies into better journalists. They develop “nose” for the news (as his report should always be “bigger” than the stories of other correspondents), they become more resourceful in obtaining the information they need, and they learn how to make their reports more intelligible. They don’t just wait for press releases. They look for the news and highlight in their reports the most interesting or most significant angles of events they cover.
The defunct Angeles Sun and its rival, the defunct Currents, were just local weeklies based in Angeles City in the early and mid-1990s. But the quality of their reports and photos was comparable to respected national dailies at the time. Perhaps it was because almost all of their reporters and editors were connected with national newspapers. Those were the days when “firing squad” photos were frowned upon. It was a time when news reports were real news and not just some words made by some people about something that were not really worthy to be published.
In a daily newspaper, editors rely on the reports of reporters in order to fill up the pages. Oftentimes, editors have no choice but to use the submitted reports, including the irrelevant and evidently non-news materials. Unlike editors of national dailies who have numerous choices of stories from reporters and provincial correspondents, their colleagues in the provinces are sometimes, if not usually, faced with dilemma: sacrifice the quality of the reports to ensure printing of the paper or use only the newsworthy materials and risk the possibility that there won’t be any issue the next day.
Of course, the most feasible compromise would be having competent reporters who know and can perform the basics of news gathering and writing. Regular lecture-type and on-the-job skills-enhancing exercises would compliment this. An equally competent news editor or deskman is also necessary to substantially minimize grammatical, factual, or typographical errors.
Publishers, management and editors of newspaper have various degrees of expectation from the editorial staff. On a scale of 1 to 10, for instance, one would expect his staff to get 5. So if he got 6, the reporter already exceeded his expectation. But, of course, as I stated above, different people have different levels of expectation, depending on their values, experience and orientation.
An unwritten but common goal of many community journalists is to make a difference in the lives of the people. To become an agent of social change (for the better) and people empowerment -- more than just becoming a mouthpieces of the government, the powerful and the moneyed -- makes one a true journalist. This is the precise reason why media is called the Fourth Estate.
