Nickens knows best

Tim Nickens said, "I hadn't thought of that..." about a comment I made in class. I stumped a newsman; a journalist who has been at the St. Petersburg Times since 1984.

Stupidly, I replied that working in food service has its benefits and he was gone. Today, I shamelessly searched the Times for any evidence that Nickens had learned something from a peon like me. Nothing.

The most important thing he said, outside of all the things we have heard from the other speakers, was that the Times often writes to an "audience of one". Knowing that what we read may actually be a policy suggestion to the governor is juicier than the dirtiest celebrity escapade.

Lately, the Times has really been focusing on issues of immediate interest. Capitalism is doomed; Bush has a mixed legacy; Obama has a lot on his plate - these are all recent editorials.

We only delve into issues on the international scale "when we think we can explain something... or relate it to Florida," he said. Unfortunately, that's a very narrow-minded view of the world and Floridians.

Happily, Nickens admitted that in some cases they have "marginalized readers and haven't given them enough credit" when it comes to international issues. Instead of having faith in their readers, the Times only serves as one voice in a cacophony of others that address the same tired issues that pervade the 24-hour news cycle.

As a liberal paper, I can understand why he may not want to acknowledge that team America occasionally has to play world police.

When listing that the Israel-Gaza conflict was the subject of an editorial, the Times overlooks the ever-present issues in Sudan (genocide), China (pollution and human rights), and Russia (cold war intrigue).

People do deserve the perspective on these foreign issues.

Regardless, I'll continue tugging my ego by checking the paper for evidence that Nickens found some sort of angle in what I said.

Rosemary Goudreau

Rosemary Goudreau must be a tremendous writer because her forceful and direct speaking style engaged me like most speakers can't.

Her powerful, yet soft spoken approach belongs in a small room among intellectually driven students. While in her element she made the whole room feel for the dying print establishment. Her soft spoken voice transformed into a swan song when she discussed the dismal prospects for newspapers.

As the editorial page editor for the Tampa Tribune, she versed herself in the conflict of maintaining the values of a newspaper as an institution. "A newspaper provides a benchmark for the community to assess their values," she said.

Her most poignant advice concerning editorials was that they must be filled with facts, but are not confined to a world without emotional appeals. A view she shares with Mark Mahoney, who's work we read earlier that week.

One of the necessities of an editorial writer is the sense that you are making a difference. In fact, on her Tampa Tribune bio, that's the "Best part" of her former job.

I've always noticed that strongly held opinions exist outside the rational world. Goudreau's philosophy is that people want to make up their own minds based on the facts they are given. This makes perfect sense as an editorial writer.
However, what people really do is process facts in a highly subjective way.

For example, in 2006 I decided I didn't know enough about Islam. So I read the book "No God, but God" which goes over Islam's history in about 300 pages. It made a strong argument that the current conflict is a sort of Protestant Reformation within Islam between Sunnis, Shi'a and ethnic minorities like the Kurds. This argument was explicitly discussed in the Foreword and Epilogue.

I gave the same book to my father who was equally interested in learning about Islam. He took away that Islam has always and will always exist at the tip of a sword.

The book presented the same facts to each of us and we both came to different conclusions based on our tendency for liberal or conservative politics.

That being said, I'm sure newspapers are relevant when the public is not informed prior to reading. You could easily be influenced about sugar plantations in the everglades if you are not an environmentalist or a farmer. But the obscurity of those issues and the infrequency with which they turn up is hardly enough to justify a career with. And this is why newspapers are dying; the world they appealed to - one without 24/7 news channels and the fact killing machine known as the internet - is dead, buried and rotting in the earth.

Just like the institution's (newspaper) values are set in stone, people's beliefs are similarly inaccessible to facts.

Vickie Chachere

As a writer it is often easy to be a little jaded about the credibility of other reporter's work. The best advice is skepticism, like the old credo of "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." So don't be lazy; check it out.

It is never as difficult or embarrassing as giving up and making a fool of yourself.

Vickie Chachere, former reporter and editor of the Tampa Tribune, had some excellent advice for young journalists. For those approaching a story that requires some difficult reporting, she said, don't rely on others in the media.

Her anecdote regarded a scientific study that was about the behavior of 3 and 4-year olds and the likelihood that some of them required very stern disciplinary responses. The moral of the story came from the popular press' reaction to the study. Instead of making clear the actual text of the study, they suggested that certain children were being severely disciplined. This kicked up the dust of the issue of spanking, one of the two things journalists can never safely discuss, according to Chachere (the other is abortion).

Instead of addressing the public's outcry and only piling fuel onto the fire, Chachere's editorial board did the reasonable thing. They tracked down the original study and the people who published it. The researchers had absolutely no idea where this discussion of abuse of children was coming from; it simply was not in their report, said Chachere.

In light of this fact, Chachere's office was able to do a very solid editorial on the sensationalism and lack of hesitance and tact of the modern media.

So, Chachere's lesson about quoting other journalists' work is a poignant reminder. Don't get ahead of yourself when faced with a story that's logistically impossible to do your own reporting on. There are often ways to get around it and stay above the current of public opinion.