Competency in the Newsroom - Forum Summary

This is a summary of the fifth of nineteen sessions around the country sponsored by the Committee of Concerned Journalists examining the core principles journalists share. This one, held at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, FL, on February 26, 1998, examined what skills were required of a competent journalist and a competent newsroom, particularly as society was becoming more complex and specialized, adding to the demands on journalism.

The forums are not intended as definitive, but rather for a kind of coordinated reporting effort which will be the basis for other research, follow-up interviews, survey work, some content analysis, a video series and ultimately a monograph. The Committee is underwritten with a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The Poynter faculty developed a list of 10 skills that it believed a journalist or a newsroom needed to be competent today. A group of prominent journalists then challenged and augmented that list, largely arguing that journalists often lacked a sense of history; that a sense of when one is being lied to is an essential skill; that character, which went deeper than a mastery of ethical issues, was essential, and that it also involved a capacity for sympathy and hope; and finally, that passion, or a sense that journalism was a calling and a public service, may be one of the most important elements of a competent journalist in today's environment.

The day, in effect, was about discussing what competency meant, and where the profession was lacking.

The Poynter faculty began the forum by presenting each of what it said were the elements of competency. Their list, offered in the shape of a pyramid, looked like this:

The Poynter faculty explained each element as follows:

Bottom Row

News Judgment

Poynter Director Jim Naughton described this first skill as the ability to know what was important, what was fair and what to leave out. It is perhaps the most elusive capacity of all, one which encompasses taste, character, sensitivity, guts and brains.It was, he said, "the premise" of our work.

"News judgment is knowing when not to put the President's sex life on Page One." It's ... having the courage to lead the newscast with a state capitol story rather than video of the latest victim." It's "taking enough time to report the story before relating it" and "remembering that 'drive-by' should describe the crime, not the coverage."

"It pays homage to speed but reveres accuracy....It employs (both) critical thinking and ethical instinct. It relies on experience yet invites innovation....It is authoritative, not judgmental." At bottom it is about relating "the new to the known."

"We tend ... to separate News Judgment from other aspects of the craft, as if it were something only a few people need to use..but (it actually) pervades journalism at every level...

"Competent journalists constantly exercise news judgment in choosing what to report, whom to interview, whom to trust, how to illustrate, what to amplify, which data to omit...when and where -- or whether -- to run the story...how to follow up, and how to correct inevitable error."

"And all this depends on deliberation, "taking sufficient time to double- or triple-check information, to verify, to research context, to scour complementary and contradictory data, to think and then to craft an accurate and coherent account."

"Technology poses unprecedented challenges to such judgment. "The deliberative news process is disrupted now by the need to stay current as charge and countercharge are followed by rebuttal and surrebuttal and overtaken by spin and counterspin, all in a single news cycle. The latest information might be wedged into stories nanoseconds before airtime or press start. When it's all-news-all-over, the demand is for new, not necessarily for news..."

Reporting

Valerie Hyman of Poynter outlined the skills that make up reporting, which she called the foundation of journalism.

Reporting is made up of the ability to:

• Distill stories from masses of information.

• Know where to go to collect relevant documentation.

• Organize, sort and analyze sometimes conflicting evidence.

• Find, develop and maintain sources.

• Recognize a lead and how to follow it.

• Enable reluctant sources to talk.

• Develop a variety of interview styles.

• Be consciously curious.

• Recognize their own assumptions, prejudices and biases, and test and challenge them.

• Think independently and sometimes contrarily to ensure full and fair coverage.

• Be persistent.

• Be flexible in the face of changing facts.

"Competent reporters know how to cull stories from the world around them; to approach old stories in new ways; to find the unusual in the routine; ... to push themselves to see the unseen, hear the unheard, touch the untouchable."

Narrative and Language

Scott Libin and Chip Scanlan argued that "all writing," as journalism scholar James Carey has noted, " is a form of storytelling aimed at imposing coherence on an otherwise chaotic form of events."

Fulfilling that task, they added, demands the ability:

• To use language with precision and clarity in order to minimize confusion or unintended inferences.

• To choose among and to create appropriate narrative and explanatory strategies.

• To see stories in disparate events and in everyday life.

• To observe and to collect telling details, and to capture and convey them to the reader, viewer, or listener -- because there can be no good writing without solid reporting.

"While journalism may be the first draft of history, we shouldn't assume that the first draft of journalism is good enough. So, narrative competence requires also ... manag[ing] with skill the series of decisions and steps -- getting ideas, collecting information, focusing, drafting, and revising -- that lead to effective writing...

"George Orwell argues that political abuse leads to language abuse, and vice versa. When journalists choose the clear over the cloudy, the active over the passive, the direct over the indirect, the original over the hackneyed - they take responsibility for what citizens understand about the world..."

Analysis and Interpretation

G. Stuart Adam argued that once the reporter has chosen what to cover, gathered the information and mastered the ability to organize it in prose, he or she increasingly must also have the ability to analyze and interpret it for people. Such synthesis, they argued, begins with the physical.

"Understanding is created initially in journalism through literal and thick description. Joseph Conrad once wrote that the writer's job is to do the highest possible justice to the visible universe. "My task," he wrote, "is ... by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel - it is, above all, to make you see." The 'seeing' is a product of the capacity (and competence) to name things concretely.

"... What we mainly do when we engage in heavy-duty analysis is borrow from an inventory of psychological and social-scientific notions of cause and effect. In order to penetrate and analyze the world of behavior and events, we reach beneath the surface of the visible universe and dip into the domain of the unseen. For example:

1. Psychologists influenced by Freud might say that if the President pursued Monica Lewinsky, it was because he is in an arrested adolescent state.

2. Economists say that speculators in world money markets, noting fluctuations in the value of currencies generally, have been selling Canadian dollars in order to buy U.S. dollars. This, combined with the refusal of the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates and the persistence of the threat of Quebec separatism, keeps the Canadian dollar at an all-time low.

3. Sociologists say that the crime rate in the U.S. has fallen because incomes have risen.

"Journalists live not only in the world of events, but in a world of ideas. An initial test of competence in their use is familiarity with their provenance. A second test is to understand their limits. A third test is to use them cautiously and thoughtfully. Intellectual eloquence, like all forms of competence, is the product of study and practice."

Second Row

Visual Literacy

Pegie Stark Adam, Ron Reason and Kenny Irby argued that "To become visually competent one must accept...that visuals are vital elements in story telling."

"... To make words and visuals work together, journalists must seek common ground..., finding similarities among the disciplines, searching for a common vocabulary.

"That means understanding the inner workings of still and video photography - what makes good composition, lighting, balance, tension, mood. That means understanding the inner workings of design -- the nuances of typography, organization, the grid, and color. That means understanding the conceptualizing of an image in an illustration or graphic -- the power of symbolism, the creation of texture, the beauty of composition. For broadcast and new media, it means understanding how to write with video and natural sound.

"This can be done through discussion, collaboration and participation. Go out on a photo shoot and experience what it's like to compose an image through the lens, learn how a scene is lighted, learn how to crop a photo. Read what artists, photographers, and designers say about good art. Learn to be a visual critic by listening to visual journalists and incorporating their vocabulary into yours..."

Numerical Competence

Deborah Potter of Poynter argued that the numerical world remains an area of serious weakness for journalists that increasingly "causes nothing but trouble in today's newsrooms." But the problem now is not so much that journalists avoid numbers.

"Too often reporters and editors are suckers for numbers. To them, a number looks solid, factual, more trustworthy than a fallible human source. And being numerically incompetent, they can't find the flaws in statistics and calculations. They can't tell the difference between a meaningless number and a significant one. The result is stories that are misleading and confusing at best, and at worst flat out wrong.

"...Simply put, journalists need math skills to make sense of numbers the way they need language skills to make sense of words. ...

"Journalists with numerical competence are more important than ever in today's highly technical world. They are the writers and editors who can assess and explain scientific, medical, technological and economic developments. They are the journalists who can find stories in databases by crunching numbers themselves, instead of waiting for someone with a vested interest to do it for them..."

Technological Competence

Nora Paul, Bill Boyd and Roy Peter Clark argued that as journalists work to master the increasing technology of communications, they have to keep sight of their real purpose.

"In trying to define the "technological" competencies for journalists, it may help to look beyond or through the technology and focus on the journalism. The technology, however advanced, is a means to carry out the public service mission of the journalist. To carry out that mission, journalists must master the tools of a wired world. And leaders in the newsroom must commit the appropriate resources for hardware, software, and training, creating the culture of continuous learning and unlearning that will allow journalists to do their best work.

"The tools of the computer age are easy to list, and with training and practice, possible to master... There is the word processor, using spreadsheets, databases, telecommunications, the Internet, and more.

"It is, however, not these technical skills but the intellectual, personal, interpersonal, and journalistic skills that are key for journalists using the new tools and resources of computer assisted reporting and research...

"...An investigative reporter, who once took months to manage mountains of paper files, can now analyze 100,000 records of police overtime with astonishing speed. So the computer helps us find better ways to perform our traditional tasks.

"But the computer also provides a window into new ways of committing powerful journalism. This requires, for example, conceiving stories with a vision of the WEB version in mind. WEB technology offers greater newshole, the opportunity to give readers access to a depth of information, a heightened level of feedback and interactivity, access to additional resources, and compelling multi-media formats.

"Embracing change does not require us to jettison traditional values...Just because we can make autopsy files of a murder victim available on our Home Page doesn't absolve us of our responsibilities to use our judgment in the public interest."

Third Row

Cultural Competence

Aly Colon and Keith Woods argued that cultural competence really "fulfills one of the requirements of a free press, as outlined in 1947 by the Hutchins Commission: "The Projection of a Representative Picture of the Constituent Groups in the Society."

"Who should journalists address first when they want to interview an Asian family? Where can photojournalists turn when they want to know how to take pictures at a mosque, the temple for followers of Islam, one of the fastest growing religions in the United States? What's the difference between a Cuban-American, a Puerto Rican, a Dominican, and a Mexican-American? ...

"The mythological melting pot idea allowed journalists to approach news and communities as if everyone shared the same news values. The reality today resembles a boiling stew. Dip into it in the wrong way and journalists can get burned. And what they report will misrepresent the flavor of that community. Coverage that springs from ignorance or is inhibited by fear of the unfamiliar falls short of the basic tenets of ethical journalism; that is, journalism that is fair, complete, balanced, clear and, above all, true.

"Journalists who want to reflect the reality of the world around them need to be able to connect the multicultural communities in their midst. They must relate to them not simply as outsiders looking in, but seek ways to see it as an insider would looking out..."

Civic Competence

Pete Weitzel and Ed Miller argued that civic competence " requires looking at issues and events and public discontents through the prism of this citizenship, tracking, explaining and monitoring public policy that matters to them, whether that's patching potholes on neighborhood streets or spending millions on major league sports stadiums.

"...These journalists will explode the traditional Five W's in search of deeper and more inclusive reporting -- what are the undisclosed consequences, who are the excluded stakeholders, why are they being left out?

"...Competence means making sense of budgets and bond issues, translating bureauspeak, deciphering agency regulations, and clarifying the claptrap of councils and commissions. It's gaining a grasp on politics, on who has clout and who doesn't, on how things get done, and sharing that knowledge with citizens.

"Journalists viewing through the prism of citizenship will put politics in a different dimension -- the relationships that allow people to confront, debate, disagree, negotiate, and ultimately reach the compromise or consensus that becomes public policy. ...

Top Row

Ethics

Bob Steele and Paul Pohlman argued that "journalists travel through moral mine fields. Intense deadlines and competitive fervor..., bottom-line mentalities, technological demands, and organizational dysfunctions, complex issues..., convoluted information, and contradictory facts cloud logic, erode common sense, and undermine good intentions.

"...Many journalists admit to being unprepared and uncomfortable about making the ethical decisions that will improve their chances for getting through the mine field. That lack of confidence and competence can produce significant consequences.

"Absent a moral compass that points to clear values and guiding principles, journalists may fall short in fulfilling their responsibilities. Misguided journalists may fail in their duty to pursue the truth about important issues and events. Journalists without strong ethical decision-making skills are more prone to veer off course and cause harm through unfair or inaccurate reporting, invasion of privacy, insensitivity to story subjects, disrespect to sources, or just plain shoddy work.

"...It is not enough, however, to want to do the right thing. Journalists must develop the capacity to carry out their good intentions. They should be increasingly proficient at:

• Recognizing Ethical Issues. You have more time to make good decisions when you anticipate the land mines. Once you are on top of them you have fewer choices with greater pressure.

• Analysis and Moral Reasoning. Strong critical thinking skills allow you to weigh competing values, recognize conflicting loyalties, search for alternatives, and consider consequences.

• Communicating ethical positions clearly and cogently. Doing ethics is part artful debate and part bare knuckle boxing. If you can't make your point, it's tough to lead others and next to impossible to influence your boss.

Journalists who continually develop their ethical competence are better prepared to make the tough calls and get through the mine field."

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