Chew the Fat

I can still speak in tongues. I tried it last night and it still works. Well at least what I say sounds exactly the same as it did when I was still involved in church leadership.

I know how to say all the right things.

I will write and execute a powerful sermon that will bring people to the Alter weeping and repenting.

I will do the eyeballing thing and I will speak with a whisper and then raise my voice loud so that people keep engrossed.

I’ll tell wonderful anecdotes and funny sidelines. At some points I will weep and others I will laugh. I will bring the bible to life with contextual background and padding.

I’ll quote memorised scripture left right and centre so that people will see that I have studied hard. I will walk though the crowd during my sermon and speak words of life and prophesy over various people in the crowd.

I will guide the church in where the spirit is leading us.

I will conclude with a challenge and people will come up weeping and needing help.
I will be prophesy over people, cast out demons, lead people to Christ and appear a spiritual giant.

That’s just the sermon part. I will look like a man of god around every corner.

It’s not hard for me because I know how it all works. I know how to act spiritual enough without looking like a loony. I know how to perform my way into church leadership.

There would be only one reason why someone would do such a thing. Ego.

Those who would have believed that I was real if I did such a thing, are they stupid?

Could anyone tell the difference between me and the next person, who wasn’t performing but was real about their convictions.

Nobody in this world knows another’s heart.

When writing a news story you must use the inverted triangle. This is the only accepted style. The inverted triangle style states that all the ‘important’ information must be in the first sentence. The what, when, where, why, who and how must all be in the first sentence. Quotes and reported speech should be used to give the story life. Find a ‘newsworthy’ angle that is interesting and different. If it is shocking and now, it is news. Some times you have to do ‘death knocks’. That is going to the family of a dead person to get a good photo or quote. Sometimes you have to chase cars down the road; some times you have to push your way to the front of a media scrum. Sometimes you have to be rude, pushy and obnoxious.

It’s hard I know, sometimes the editor asks you to do something difficult but if you write a headline story then it’s worth it, isn’t it?

Journalists are all pretty left and idealistic. We have to be; the average income is about 33,000 per year. No right thinking capitalist would put up with that kind of froth for the pressure and ugliness of reporting a story.

It seems though, we start with intentions to make a difference, to change the world, but we are worked though a system of house styles, editorial slants, relationship keeping, source greasing and advertorial brown nosing, in order to keep producing money for the media moguls, that we forget why we started in the first place, or worse, resign to the idea that we can do nothing more than be another cog in the wheel.

What I believe is particularly evil about this ‘journalism’, is the mask of objectivity it gloats. It is a McDonaldised form of story telling. If you do not do our course and write our way you will not be accredited and you will not work in our industry. We are the standard and style, all others are wholly subjective and embellishments of our ‘truth’.

Gloria Emerson, an award winning journo who covered the Vietnam War for the New York Times, said that she regrets going to the war everyday. She wondered if she really made any difference at all.

“My stories were just ice cubes,” She said.
“All those hours I spent typing and writing, what has become of those stories? They have melted away with time, they have been forgotten”.

Perhaps there is hope. A new journalism that has not been standardised maybe on the rise. Reporters will be trusted because we see their commitment to get as much of the scene in focus as possible. They have no editorial pressures, they do not have to stay loyal to advertisers and chief reporters, assistant editors and sub editors do not filter their stories.

We are not there yet, but I hope that the rise of bloging and personal Web Pages will usher in a new era of journalism where grass roots freelance reporting paints a picture with a much clearer brush.

I wake up with my head still spinning from long island ice teas. I planned to really begin it today but my head is still twisted. I tramp to class through everything Wellington can throw at me.

The next two hours is short hand, squiggles and lines that I still haven’t grasped, perhaps because I haven’t done the homework. I have coffee in the break but it can’t wash out the throb in my head.

Next are announcements, people pipe up all over the class room and explain the scoops, leads and breaks they have got in their delegated beat area in Wellington. I keep my head low so no one will question me.

Lunch time, I sit with enthusiastic reporters who spend the hour talking about news and their recently published stories. I haven’t published one story since I moved down.

The afternoon is spent with guest speakers and inspiring stories. I know that everyone is looking forward to the session ending so they can chase up more stories and practice their short hand. I am only thinking about getting home or heading to the pub for a long island ice-tea.

And so I hope that writing this will kick that apathy, but I suspect that it will not. If there was a devil, it would be me.