Patrick Pexton, the “public ombudsman” for The Washington Post, exhorts his colleagues at the Post to devote more attention to members of the laity who dare to attempt to contact them:
Post editors, reporters, bloggers and copy aides: Return the blessed phone calls and e-mails from readers! And do it with courtesy, respect and politeness, even when the caller, or writer, is persistent or even unpleasant. Please.
By doing so, you’ll do more to keep, satisfy and engage readers than anything you say in your next 20 tweets.
Here are some recent tales from readers:
A Virginia reader copied me on three e-mail queries in the past year to various Post writers, none of which were acknowledged. The e-mails were polite, uncomplicated and probably could have been answered in 30 seconds. After the third one, he wrote me this: “Another Post prima donna who does not answer a reasonable e-mail comment.â€
I think he’s whistling past a graveyard. You don’t go to a shoe store for a good sandwich. That there is even a need for such a thing as a public ombudsman puts the problem into bold relief. They went to J-school because they wanted to talk, not to listen or, even more to the point, to preach rather than discuss. Here’s Medill’s own description of its curriculum:
During your freshman year you will take Reporting and Writing, which covers essential journalistic skills necessary for all platforms; Multimedia Storytelling, an introduction to Web-based journalism; and Introduction to 21 st Century Media, which exposes students to business and ethics trends in the media.
Sophomore year will include Enterprise Reporting in Diverse Communities, which involves in-depth multimedia reporting in Chicago neighborhoods, and Media Presentation, which prepares students for a Journalism Residency within a specific industry.
During junior year, you will take Storytelling and Media Law and Ethics before embarking on Journalism Residency. A broad menu of elective courses, taken from sophomore year on, will round out your Medill coursework.
See a lot there about interacting with readers or viewers? Me, neither.
In all likelihood their heroes are Franklin Pierce Adams, Mike Royko, or Hunter S. Thompson or, if they’re not historically minded, Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman, notoriously dismissive of criticism. You email Paul Krugman to agree with him not to interact with him or, heavens forfend, disagree with him.
I think this is generational. The guy who teaches journalism at my son’s school just searched him out and recruited him to handle the school newspaper’s transition to digital and to interactivity. Jake’s not been a journalist, he’s a geek, but now it seems he’s a journalist as well.* The one-way, top-down, I-write-you-read thing is so last decade.
*Proud that he was sought-after, yes, but also now doubting Jake’s ability to support me in old age.
I couldn’t agree more. However, the editors and columnists are all in their 50s and 60s and will undoubtedly hold onto their positions and their old ways of doing things for dear life until the enterprises collapse around their ears.
An interesting and useful thing to have been taught in journalism is how to file an FOIA.
Which I wasn’t. So I left a story about the police department selling drugs and guns out of the evidence room on the table. I had an irate female officer with an unspecific resignation letter on my desk.
I think that’s actually pretty typical. You don’t learn to be a lawyer in law school. That’s what’s learned during the first year or so as an associate. Similarly, reporters learn by doing.
But I’m a journaist.
Go, see.