It's December folks: The one month when New York City looks like the set of "Miracle on 34th Street" and we're too busy inside Bobst's basements to notice the cheery charm. I don't want to seem pessimistic because I'm really not; I like to describe myself, as Kurt Vonnegut has been called, a "wounded optimist." With that being said, let us move on to a merrier topic: the news.
This past semester has been an eventful one for the media to say the very least. The last four months have generated an unlimited stream of stories for us to dissect: the transformation of a small protest downtown into a national movement, the darker phases of the Arab Spring, the rise and fall of a pizza man-turned-presidential nominee and the unwarranted death of a man who brought us the Genius Bar and this pixel-damaged defect on my MacBook monitor right now. As the opinion editor here at WSN, I seriously could not have asked for more material to work with.
While the stories were riveting, the reporting of them has reinforced a tidal shift in the way in which we understand and critique the news. Whether it's journalists constantly tweeting about getting arrested at an Occupy event or hyper-blogging on the ground in the Middle East, it is becoming all too evident that opinionated news reporting will replace the monotonous, inhuman "who, what, when, where and why" stories that bore us to death. To which I respond: "It's about damn time."
This push toward Gonzo-esque journalism, which is the practice of placing yourself literally inside the story, is the only attention-grabber print media has left for a nation rewired on Google-search time. And we need it now more than ever. We have, without a doubt, entered the second Gilded Age. If you remember the last one from social studies class, it ended when a bunch of journalists, appropriately called muckrakers, decided that it was time for some humane subjectivity to expose the entrenched lies of the day. If we betray our predecessors at this pivotal moment, then to hell with journalism, I'll take the LSAT.
I found it simply unjust when a journalist reported on what happened at University of California, Davis and didn't scream at the pepper-spraying police officer in his story. Or wrote about Herman Cain's apparent sexual deviance, pre-campaign-end, and forgot to say, "HEY, BESIDES ALL OF THESE AFFAIRS, NOTHING HE SAYS MAKES ANY SENSE AND HE'S THE FRONTRUNNER."
I know it's not what "professional journalism" stands for, but then again, the voices of "professional journalism" were the same ones who were silently negligent before the Iraq war, voiceless when the banks got away with capital murder, and today, continue to "ask" a field of crazy Republicans questions that a third grader would giggle at. They're not journalists, they're moronic talking heads — not to be confused with the brilliant alternative band of the late '80s.
At what point does the press have to step in and speak up? The idea of objective journalism states that we, the journalists, will report for you, the readers, and you guys will form your own opinion based on the facts we give you. However, that's a lot of responsibility to lay upon the American people; we are a citizenry that still watches American Idol in swarms — we're not exactly the best decision-makers on our own. It is time for journalists to start reporting from their hearts and minds rather than the AP Stylebook. In my opinion, that's the most professional thing we can do.
