Journalists need to know a little about a lot

In my role as Reader Representative and Associate Managing Editor at The Enterprise, I frequently represent the paper at career days and other events sharing information about journalism as a career.

One of the suggestions I always share with potential young journalists is the importance of getting a good broad-based education. Yes, they should take psychology and sociology and world history and (at least one) foreign language, and biology and chemistry and math – whether they like it or not. The reason is that journalism is about all those things and more.

A reporter, particularly a young beginning reporter, is likely to be sent out – on the spur of the moment – to cover a story about anything from a car accident to highway construction to agriculture. They need to be educated enough to understand anything they are thrown into and, more importantly, confident and curious enough to ask about anything they don’t understand.

I have, more than once, counseled inexperienced journalists to ask every question that pops into their heads – and to ask it again and again in as many ways as they have to and of as many people as necessary until they understand their subject thoroughly enough to write about it.

Or, as I sometimes put it very plainly – “It’s much better to look stupid to one person who’s an expert in the subject than to look stupid to thousands of people who read your inaccuracies in the paper the next day.” That is, truly a major part of our role as professional communicators – understanding things well enough to communicate them clearly and succinctly to our readers.

So, whether we are writing about fish kills or kills in a volleyball game, hundredweights of rice or pounds per hour of chemical emissions, we recognize our responsibility to know what we are talking about – or to take the time to find out.

When we fail, as we occasionally do, we also recognize our responsibility to acknowledge and correct our errors – and to make sure we learn from them.