The Observer, April 22, 2005
Volume XXXVII, Issue 26
Buffalo Bias: Good reporting can inspire, provoke critical thinking
As a nation we have developed, among other questionable habits, the practice of constantly criticizing our media. Healthy criticism is a good thing, but I sometimes wonder if in the midst of our critiquing we lose sight of the value of good journalism.
Last week brought two amazing speakers to campus – two phenomenal writers who made me remember why our society needs good journalists and why I've spent the past two years wresting 800 words a week out of my brain and lending them to this paper. Katherine Boo, a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine, and Emma Sepulveda, a columnist for the Reno Gazette-Journal, remind us what journalism is supposed to be about.
Boo writes exclusively about America's marginalized citizens: the residents of ghettoes, swamps, and projects and about what they do with the little they have. She covers people and stories that mainstream America – let alone the typical readers of The New Yorker – are unlikely to think about seriously on a daily basis. Her work has garnered her numerous awards, including a MacArthur Genius Grant and a Pulitzer Prize.
Sepulveda focuses on Latino concerns, much to the disapproval of many Nevadans, and for her pains she receives expletive-filled phone messages on a regular basis. The calls come from readers who think the people she speaks for – immigrants, legal or illegal, who get the short end of the stick in this country – should go back to where they came from. In addition to being told to "go back to Mexico" (Sepulveda is from Chile), she receives death threats often enough to keep her office door continually locked.
Why do these women do what they do? Boo and Sepulveda were unequivocal about their motivation: they think they can make a difference. "I have this sense of guilt," Sepulveda said last Thursday, "because I am doing for this country what I could never do for Chile." What Sepulveda and Boo are doing is speaking for those who can't or aren't listened to. What they're doing is getting their readers to think about people who are otherwise ignored. They are working for change, one well-crafted sentence at a time. Boo said she hopes her pieces do something – even something "abysmally small" – to make the situation of her subjects less unfair.
Journalism is not just a bunch of hot air. On this campus in particular, I feel the need to state that writing is as valid a career as engineering. Those who work with words are no less intelligent than those who work with numbers.
I guess I consider myself an amateur writer, and after listening to Boo and Sepulveda, I realized that it's reading their work, and the work of similar writers, that keeps me writing.
This column is one of the things I will miss most about my undergraduate career. I don't write it because I think I know better than everyone else; I don't write because I have free time on my hands or because I don't spend enough time at the computer. As far as the finished product is concerned, I harbor very few delusions of grandeur, but I take my efforts seriously. The work I've put into writing this column – and I suspect my Observer colleagues can echo this – is about what I'd put into a three-credit class. If I quote statistics, I get them from reputable sources, which means I've had to scrap quite a few ideas because I couldn't find the data to back them up – either because the statistics just aren't available or because my original idea was way off-base. My general policy is not to invent things, even though it'd make my life easier.
I write because I want to get people to think about the world outside of their rooms. Because I write an editorial column I usually take a stand on an issue; however, I don't necessarily want everyone to just agree with my side of the story. I just hope that someone reading my column will think critically about the issue I discuss. Does thinking change anything? Maybe not, but it's hard to enact meaningful change if you don't think at all.
Writing this column has thickened my skin. It's made me cognizant of how I substantiate my arguments. It's made me intimately familiar with the BBC's website, and it's made me appreciate the work of journalists everywhere. It's also made me realize that I over-use semicolons.
Above all, writing this column has made me realize that I will keep writing. I'm no Katherine Boo, no Emma Sepulveda, but I'll find a way to work my semicolons – and the words in between – into my career.
