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| Photo by Michael Swickard, 1969 |
© 2015 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. "I
think journalism gets measured by the quality of information it presents, not
the drama or the pyrotechnics associated with us." Bob Woodward
I got into journalism via
photo-journalism. My father taught at the Air Force School of Photography. We
had a darkroom at home. He taught me the school's curriculum so I was a good
photographer by high school.
This last weekend I was on a panel
talking about journalism and the student newspaper at New Mexico State
University. It no longer is acting like a traditional print newspaper of the
past.
A student newspaper has two broad
functions: first, as a learning lab for students who want to become journalists
and secondly as a watchdog on the student government and college management.
Both functions are critical and it's obvious every public university needs an
independent news source.
On the panel were three currently working
journalists who fairly recently worked on the student newspaper in the past and
myself who had been a photographer, cartoonist and columnist over the years. How
I got into journalism: at a high school basketball game I took a picture my
father thought was good. I had several for the student newspaper. He picked
this one out and said, "Take that down to the local paper, they may buy
it."
I left it at the counter of the
newspaper with my name. A day later my photograph was on the sports page with the
caption, "Photo by Sports Editor Stan Green." I went down to
straighten this out. At the front counter I explained the picture was mine. The
secretary said, "You must be mistaken."
There was a clinching argument: I
pointed out to the secretary that to one side in the picture was Stan Green
standing with his camera as the player went by. Mr. Green came out of his
office laughing. "I saw myself in that picture and wondered who in blazes
shot it?" I was invited to be a photo stringer.
In 1967 the Alamogordo Daily News was typeset via hot type in the way
newspapers had been set for more than a hundred years. Over the last forty
years journalism and media have changed entirely.
There are fewer daily and weekly newspapers.
But there are more news organizations with all of the connections via the
Internet. In 1968 when I started as a photographer at the NMSU student
newspaper both the photography and newspaper printing were essentially much as
they had been for many decades. More important, it was likely that the
technology of journalism was going to remain the same when I graduated and got
a job.
What I realized sitting with those
working journalists is that 21st century journalism is different yet much is
the same as I experienced at college. Ultimately however the information gets
to consumers there is still the requirement words make sense. Sentences must
adhere to principles of grammar and spelling.
And the purpose of journalism is
still as it was when Bob Woodward worked as a team with Carl Bernstein at the Washington Post to report on the
Watergate scandal. The downfall of President Richard Nixon was achieved by relentless
investigative reporting.
It was what started many careers in
journalism over the decades with the realization that a free press was all that
kept us Americans free. That is more so now than then.
Journalism at universities will
continue. I wish students going into the field of journalism were better
educated in statistics, economics and history along with all of the other
things they must learn about the new Internet opportunities.
And like me through decades of
journalism the next generation students must have a thick hide as the powerful
elites try to squash them. We consumers need the next generation of journalists
to be as strong as Bob Woodward if we are to remain free.
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