Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

Perspective

With the semester ending and us trying to tie up of all the loose ends in 10 days or less, I can’t help but feel guilty about not blogging. It’s in the back of my head all the time, in every conversation about journalism with my fellow classmates, I hear the irritating little reminder, “this could be a blog.”

I’ve even taken to having less conversations with people. Instead I’ve been storing silent mental notes about bloggable ideas to be. But even still as the clock ticks and tocks and the rain drops outside fall I can not fathom why I should be spreading my blogging wings when I could be calling my sick aunt– who was recently diagnosed with cancer. Or I could listen to that interview that I had the other day. Or I could finish my lox and cheese sandwich which began to rest next to my keyboard at the start of this page.

The Fly on the Wall

I guess the value of blogging can become it is linking a personal thought or opinion to a larger picture. So part of blogging, as I see it, is that it it adds the “me” to the conversation (conversations I could be having with people in real life). “It’s like a column” said the Milanese Fulbright-er sitting next to me.
I’m not sure if there’s a columnist in me that a reader needs to know about.

This brings me to one of those ideas that I mentally recorded earlier, about journalist having to leave the self out of their reports.

Throughout our discussions I’ve heard more than a fair share about the conflicts of interests that can fog the facts, and I highly appreciate getting untainted facts when I can. But the news and those who tell it’s stories share something that unites them. They share the moments that make our history, and that is powerful. As a student I tend to lean at learning the rules before breaking them. When gathering news, I quietly struggle around a scene to report unbiasedly without the I.

As a practicing documentary photographer I’ve invested time developing my personal vision and I can’t say fully heartedly that it doesn’t leak into in each and every document I produce. It may be in my selection of scenes, the words that describe them or the questions I use to get the facts told to me, but when I process the information- produce, edit and publish, I am relating a personal account as I lived it, as I questioned it, and as I fit it into a larger context.

So as for the fly on the wall, who watches and doesn’t change the scene- yeah right. In real life, if any fly comes anywhere near me, especially if it gets next to that half-eaten sandwich still sitting next to me I’d swat it away. And most people I know would do the same. Although I do like to recede into the background, it is in most scenes I live, whether or not I’m reporting.

Participation

The stories I love the most take me out of my seat and bring me into the lives of others through the reporters moves. I tend to value stories differently about people than straight news- that is they impact me and motivate me to become involved. OK, so here I am now dancing around the an idea that I’m sure we’ve all thought about, particularly since Brian Storm came to visit with us- Advocacy. Where change is needed should we act? And if we do, how does our role as journalists change? Do we then cross over into becoming to an Activist as Brian did who is now working to shed light onto specific causes? And what does blogging have to do with it anyway? I don’t know, but I thought it was worth a blog.

A couple weeks back I was working on an article for Lives in Focus, a web site that deals with how the criminal justice affects the family members of the most imprisoned population in the world. It was just after the election and I was assigned to write about how the first democratic majority in the NY State senate in more than four decades might affect mandatory minimum sentencing law in New York.

Under Governor Rockefeller laws were enacted in 1973 that created mandatory sentences for drug offenses. While the crime rate has drastically declined in New York City over the last fifteen years–a fact some attributed to these laws, which in fact far preceded the decline–many have criticized the state’s tough laws as blunt and expensive.

Prof. Peter Moskos at John Jay College well sums up what many see as the failing of the laws:

“The problem with the drug laws is that they don’t draw any distinction between major and minor players. If the laws are repealed it’s not that we’re decriminalizing drugs.  We’re just returning discretion to judges in their sentencing.“

I heard over and over that the laws had had their day and would be shortly scrapped. But more than the political climate, criminal justice experts and prison reform advocates alike pointed to the state’s fiscal crisis as the impetus for a radical change in drug offense sentencing. Money talks. Change it seemed was on the way.

On what many see as the verge of a break with these laws, I wanted to look back at some of the small time players who were affected by the laws.

Anthony Papa is one such small timer. More than twenty years ago, a small businessman with money trouble, he took a chance and decided to courier an envelope of cocaine from the Bronx to Westchester. His first time would be his last.  He was caught in a police sting and sentenced to 15 years in Sing Sing.

When I met him, he had been free more than ten years, after having been granted clemency by Gov. Pataki after he began painting in prison and his work was shown at the Whitney. I talked with him about his efforts to reform the drug laws and his work as an artist.