An an investigative journalist, researcher and expert on human rights issues in the North Caucasus region of Russia, Tlisova is being honored for courageous reporting in the face of severe intimidation and physical assaults.
She has written extensively on abuses suffered during military operations in the area; torture and disappearances; corruption; Circassian nationalism; women’s rights; censorship; and the role of Islam in regional affairs. She also has led several training workshops for journalists in the North Caucuses and served as editor in chief of the North Caucasian bureau of the REGNUM News Agency for three years.
The Nieman Class of 2009 chose Tlisova — their own classmate — for the award.
Thank you my very dear friends for honoring me with the award that every one in our class deserves just as equally. In any other place I would give a formal speech, but here before you whom I know and trust I will tell about my complicated attitude to journalism awards. This is about a deep moral conflict. As a journalist I do my duty by reporting stories. Those stories are mostly on grief and sufferings of real people and I always feel deep sense of shame before those people when receiving awards. On the other hand I understand that by awarding journalists the community brings more attention to their regions and stories, which is a best success for a journalist and this brings piece into my heart. Being chosen by the journalists like you is not only a great honor but a great credit and responsibility as well.
My family is here today. 15 people, three generations. My father, whose 5 brothers and sisters died during the Stalin times of hunger. He was the only one who survived as a child in the family where his father was a baker who saved lives of hundreds of village orphans by secretly giving them small pieces of bread he was stealing from the bakery.
My mother who worked for 45 years as a midwife in the village hospital where she was the only help for local women. More than three thousand babies came to this world through her hands — all healthy. Gulag, Solovki, Siberia — those are not easy words for my family on either side, those are the places where my grand parents and generations before them suffered and died. My brother and his wife — parents of five, my sister — our colleague journalist and her two children, and my children. My old friends, Nick and Ruth Daniloff, whose kind participation in my life is invaluable as well as my new friends — all of you in this room.
When I was thinking what to say here today I went through my archive. What I wrote during last 12 years. About three thousand articles almost the same as my moms’ number of babies. However my stories are not about happiness. Corruption, disappearances, military crimes against civilians, assassinations, attacks, arrests, mass atrocities. Sadly often those stories are about my close friends or colleagues.
Most of my stories are written under different pseudonyms. Dana Cei investigated the torture of political prisoners. She was the one who found unbeatable evidences of involvement of the federal secret services in massacre and disappearances and published the so-called black lists of people condemned to death. Rinat Fairullin wrote on corruption of high ranked authorities including the representatives of the Russian president in the region. Denis Golovalov wrote intensively on the close relationships between mafia and the government. The last one is very special to me. My colleague was murdered because he was suspected as the one who carried the Golovanov pseudonym.
The less dangerous stories that I covered under my own name were also good enough for being under continued pressure actually reporting for the foreign press is already a good reason for being suspicious. This is the document you receive from the police after being arrested, neglected searched and kept for an hours. This one is the paper from the FSB request for presence in the office for interrogation. Those two papers are the only ones I have. All other arrests went officially unreported. I want to read except from the book I am working on. I don’t think it needs any explanations.
“Here they are. Two cars like sharks, metallic, dark, and shiny, with the black unclear windows, they cut her from the world and squeeze her between them. Men in gray jump from the first car and run to the woman. The smell of last nights’ drinks hits her sensors. Their hands squash her hands. They push her into their car. She is silent and does not ask where they are going. It appears not too far. Few blocks away stands the gray, dirty building of the branch of MVD.
Her bag, camera, cell phone all are taken away. She is in the cage. It is dark. One side of the cage is made of beams from flour to flour. Space between each of them is small — you can hardly put your hand but the beams themselves are enormously huge.
She feels the smell. The smell penetrates into the skin, lungs, blood, and brain. The smell that makes her believe that it is her own from now on and forever. She hears voices, something is screaming. Cats? Too loud for a cat. Words? Humans? No human being can scream like this. Can they? What did the Voice say? “Enough!” Nothing stops. Small piece of something white lays on the floor – a finger? Is this blood all around? A broken glass with pieces of human flesh on it. Ah, why did she touch the beam? Something is sticking to her hand. Piece of human scalp with short black hear. Is it attached to her hand forever? She cannot drop it. Now it is her screaming: Let me out of here!! A man in gray appears with anger, opens his mouths, which turn into the old hoarse Gramophone. Words came to her very slowly like from the Elephants’ trunk “Be happy, you are not in the basement”
Her shoes are glued to the floor by something tacky. She does not want it to be the blood. It is just a berry jam. She can even lie down and rest. No smell, no screams, no scalps or blood, just aromatic jam that nicely enshrouds her body, and there are butterflies all around”.
During this year at Nieman we had many conversations on journalism and its’ future. Is it really worth all the sacrifices we have to make? Do people really need what we do?
This is the internal Russian passport. The stamp here is the proof of my address. If there is no stamp than you are homeless. In 2007 I took photos of the passports of the refugees that lived in the camp for internal displaced people for more than 14 years. None of their passports had this stamp. After the photos came out and the report appeared I received a letter from those refugees that since then they have gotten stamps in their passports they could not get for 14 years, which meant that they are not homeless anymore.
58 prisoners in Nalchik told their lawyers that the torture ended after I published their photos that were taken soon after the arrest with all the horrible signs of electrocution and other types of torture.
17 children from the mountain village that were poisoned by the pollution from the nearby nuclear lab got medical treatment from the government only after a series of my reports.
There are many similar stories and all the time there were journalists who were there before me, who decided that the situation is too dangerous or too hopeless. We have to try anyway. My answer to all those journalistic questions is — yes, we can.
Circassian etiquette, Adyge Habza does not allow people to show their feelings to even very close relatives. We use symbols instead of words. If you make something with your own hands and give it to someone then that is the sign of your sympathy. My children, my sister, her children, and me — we made these green bags with the Circassian National flag on them, there are 62 of them, I hope enough for every one in this room. Please, except these gifts as the admission of that my heart belongs to you forever.
Fatima Tlisova’s Remarks
Thank you my very dear friends for honoring me with the award that every one in our class deserves just as equally. In any other place I would give a formal speech, but here before you whom I know and trust I will tell about my complicated attitude to journalism awards. This is about a deep moral conflict. As a journalist I do my duty by reporting stories. Those stories are mostly on grief and sufferings of real people and I always feel deep sense of shame before those people when receiving awards. On the other hand I understand that by awarding journalists the community brings more attention to their regions and stories, which is a best success for a journalist and this brings piece into my heart. Being chosen by the journalists like you is not only a great honor but a great credit and responsibility as well.
My family is here today. 15 people, three generations. My father, whose 5 brothers and sisters died during the Stalin times of hunger. He was the only one who survived as a child in the family where his father was a baker who saved lives of hundreds of village orphans by secretly giving them small pieces of bread he was stealing from the bakery.
My mother who worked for 45 years as a midwife in the village hospital where she was the only help for local women. More than three thousand babies came to this world through her hands — all healthy. Gulag, Solovki, Siberia — those are not easy words for my family on either side, those are the places where my grand parents and generations before them suffered and died. My brother and his wife — parents of five, my sister — our colleague journalist and her two children, and my children. My old friends, Nick and Ruth Daniloff, whose kind participation in my life is invaluable as well as my new friends — all of you in this room.
When I was thinking what to say here today I went through my archive. What I wrote during last 12 years. About three thousand articles almost the same as my moms’ number of babies. However my stories are not about happiness. Corruption, disappearances, military crimes against civilians, assassinations, attacks, arrests, mass atrocities. Sadly often those stories are about my close friends or colleagues.
Most of my stories are written under different pseudonyms. Dana Cei investigated the torture of political prisoners. She was the one who found unbeatable evidences of involvement of the federal secret services in massacre and disappearances and published the so-called black lists of people condemned to death. Rinat Fairullin wrote on corruption of high ranked authorities including the representatives of the Russian president in the region. Denis Golovalov wrote intensively on the close relationships between mafia and the government. The last one is very special to me. My colleague was murdered because he was suspected as the one who carried the Golovanov pseudonym.
The less dangerous stories that I covered under my own name were also good enough for being under continued pressure actually reporting for the foreign press is already a good reason for being suspicious. This is the document you receive from the police after being arrested, neglected searched and kept for an hours. This one is the paper from the FSB request for presence in the office for interrogation. Those two papers are the only ones I have. All other arrests went officially unreported. I want to read except from the book I am working on. I don’t think it needs any explanations.
“Here they are. Two cars like sharks, metallic, dark, and shiny, with the black unclear windows, they cut her from the world and squeeze her between them. Men in gray jump from the first car and run to the woman. The smell of last nights’ drinks hits her sensors. Their hands squash her hands. They push her into their car. She is silent and does not ask where they are going. It appears not too far. Few blocks away stands the gray, dirty building of the branch of MVD.
Her bag, camera, cell phone all are taken away. She is in the cage. It is dark. One side of the cage is made of beams from flour to flour. Space between each of them is small — you can hardly put your hand but the beams themselves are enormously huge.
She feels the smell. The smell penetrates into the skin, lungs, blood, and brain. The smell that makes her believe that it is her own from now on and forever. She hears voices, something is screaming. Cats? Too loud for a cat. Words? Humans? No human being can scream like this. Can they? What did the Voice say? “Enough!” Nothing stops. Small piece of something white lays on the floor – a finger? Is this blood all around? A broken glass with pieces of human flesh on it. Ah, why did she touch the beam? Something is sticking to her hand. Piece of human scalp with short black hear. Is it attached to her hand forever? She cannot drop it. Now it is her screaming: Let me out of here!! A man in gray appears with anger, opens his mouths, which turn into the old hoarse Gramophone. Words came to her very slowly like from the Elephants’ trunk “Be happy, you are not in the basement”
Her shoes are glued to the floor by something tacky. She does not want it to be the blood. It is just a berry jam. She can even lie down and rest. No smell, no screams, no scalps or blood, just aromatic jam that nicely enshrouds her body, and there are butterflies all around”.
During this year at Nieman we had many conversations on journalism and its’ future. Is it really worth all the sacrifices we have to make? Do people really need what we do?
This is the internal Russian passport. The stamp here is the proof of my address. If there is no stamp than you are homeless. In 2007 I took photos of the passports of the refugees that lived in the camp for internal displaced people for more than 14 years. None of their passports had this stamp. After the photos came out and the report appeared I received a letter from those refugees that since then they have gotten stamps in their passports they could not get for 14 years, which meant that they are not homeless anymore.
58 prisoners in Nalchik told their lawyers that the torture ended after I published their photos that were taken soon after the arrest with all the horrible signs of electrocution and other types of torture.
17 children from the mountain village that were poisoned by the pollution from the nearby nuclear lab got medical treatment from the government only after a series of my reports.
There are many similar stories and all the time there were journalists who were there before me, who decided that the situation is too dangerous or too hopeless. We have to try anyway. My answer to all those journalistic questions is — yes, we can.
Circassian etiquette, Adyge Habza does not allow people to show their feelings to even very close relatives. We use symbols instead of words. If you make something with your own hands and give it to someone then that is the sign of your sympathy. My children, my sister, her children, and me — we made these green bags with the Circassian National flag on them, there are 62 of them, I hope enough for every one in this room. Please, except these gifts as the admission of that my heart belongs to you forever.
Martin Baron’s Speech
Thank you very much for inviting me to speak and for allowing me to join in honoring Fatima.
Fatima, you inspire us all. And you remind us all of why journalism became our calling.
And so I want to talk a little about that calling and the need to sustain the work that Fatima does and that all of you do — because we face extraordinary challenges, and we must meet them.
Let me start by taking you back more than five years ago: A half-dozen colleagues and I traveled to Gathland State Park in rural Maryland, more than an hour outside of Washington, D.C.
In that park stands the only national monument for American war correspondents. And until that day — the second of October, 2003 — not a name had been added to the monument since 1896, when the monument was erected by George Alfred Townsend, the youngest correspondent to cover the Civil War. The day of our visit, four names would be added, and we were there to honor them.
The Civil War was the first conflict to be covered extensively by independent journalists, and George Alfred Townsend built the monument to honor them.
Many journalists have died covering wars since 1896. So it says something that not a name had been added to the monument in more than a century. And it says something that a remote state park north of Burkittsville, Maryland, is home to America’s only national monument for war correspondents.
Even our own profession does little to honor colleagues.
There may be scholarships in their name. Typically, there is nothing more than a photo on a newsroom wall.
When the bugle sounded taps that day in Maryland, it was for four journalists who had covered the war in Iraq and what has been called the war on terrorism. They are only a handful of the journalists who have died in recent conflicts.
One of those honored was Daniel Pearl, age 38, of the Wall Street Journal. He was kidnapped in Pakistan and then beheaded.
One was Michael Kelly, age 46, of The Washington Post and the Atlantic Monthly. He died in a Humvee accident while traveling with the Third Infantry.
One was David Bloom of NBC News, age 39. He died of a pulmonary embolism, apparently the result of sitting for hours in a cramped military vehicle while traveling with the Third Infantry.
And the fourth was Elizabeth Neuffer, 46, a reporter for the Boston Globe, a colleague of mine. She died in a car accident while reporting north of Baghdad. Her death occurred this very month, almost to the day, six years ago. Today is May 7. She died May 9, 2003. And especially because of that anniversary, I was honored to accept a speaking engagement that recognizes conscience and integrity in journalism.
Elizabeth was a journalist of conscience and integrity, as is your honoree here today.
Elizabeth had previously covered wars in Bosnia and Rwanda. We had sent her to Afghanistan as well, and before going to Iraq she had reported with great distinction in Iran. Iraq would be her last war.
The irony of Elizabeth’s death is that she was neither reckless nor careless. It is why we sent her to dangerous places. It is why she survived for so long.
She had become a mother hen to her younger, less experienced colleagues. And she once warned them in an instructional memo, not to be overly daring.
“First rule of war reporting,” she wrote, “You do the paper no good getting killed getting the story …”
At a memorial service, her companion of 13 years, our Washington Bureau chief Peter Canellos noted: “It is fairly routine for foreign correspondents to carry treats like candy bars and cigarettes to places where such items are scarce. They help win favors. Elizabeth always brought boxes and boxes of pens. She would look children in the eye and say, usually with the aid of a translator, ‘This is the greatest weapon of all – you must learn to use it.’ ’’
~
Reporters who do return home safely, brave and devoted though they may be, are not greeted by parades down Main Street.
And that is as it should be.
As John Burns, foreign correspondent for the New York Times, noted once:
“We are at our best when our efforts go unremarked, when we do our job with humility, when we neither seek nor accept rewards, and with the privileges that come with anonymity.”
And that is true.
Yet I worry — worry that when our efforts go unremarked, when we do our jobs with humility, when journalism of conscience, courage, and integrity is pursued in anonymity, we risk having our efforts go unnoticed, unappreciated, and, ultimately in today’s economy, unfunded. That is as true for journalism in a faraway country, as it is for bold and ambitious journalism close to home.
We now face a terrible twist in our field. At a time when there are so many courageous journalists, around the world and here at home, the rewards and the recognition are flowing mostly to those who show no courage at all, to those whose voices are loudest but have nothing new to say and who do no reporting at all, to those who call themselves journalists but whose real trade is a cynicism that takes shape in shrill attacks on their colleagues who labor selflessly, often perilously, in the field.
The rewards and recognition increasingly fall on those so-called journalists who pander to ideology — of the right and of the left — and who make sport from assailing serious journalists, journalists who do their homework, seek to verify facts, and whose allegiance is only to the truth, as best they can determine it. Under assault are journalists who abhor celebrity, who value integrity, and yet find their own professionalism called into question by others who see in distortion a path to commercial gain.
The serious journalists are out reporting. The other so-called journalists work securely from radio booths, and television studios, and even in print. Their currency is bile and sarcasm and ridicule. They offer a model that is highly efficient: Costs are low. The audience is receptive. People are entertained. Money is made.
Theirs is not the journalism of Elizabeth Neuffer, David Bloom, Michael Kelly, or Daniel Pearl, each of whom dared to be an honest eyewitness to history, believing such work served a greater good.
Unfortunately for those of us committed to serious journalism, all of you in this room and so many others, the cynics who call themselves journalists are gaining ground at our expense.
~
Let’s face it: Our public image is awful, humiliatingly so.
The credibility of mainstream media has fallen to probably its lowest point since it was first measured.
Sixty percent of Americans disagree with the statement that the press tries to report news without bias. Fifty-eight percent think the press does not care about complaints or inaccuracies. More than half say we’re out of touch with mainstream Americans.
And almost 60% think newspapers are more concerned with making profits than serving the public interest, a number that has risen over the years.
A record this poor is especially troubling for a profession where credibility is central to what it is selling. If you do not believe us, if you do not trust us, it is no wonder you will look elsewhere for information.
And the public is doing just that — partly because they distrust us, partly because technologically they now can, and partly because they prefer to harvest information from noninstitutional sources, including their peers. Also … partly because they are drawn to sources of information that affirm their point of view. And partly because real journalism has been overshadowed and obscured by showmanship and fakery.
With disastrous consequences, our profession, our industry, has failed to tell our story — to tell of the hard work that people like you do, to explain how we go about our work, and to show how ordinary people have benefited from independent, honest journalism — day after day, year after year, and over many decades.
Much that we do is a public service — some of it Pulitzer-winning, but most of it all in a day’s work — and yet too few people know of the good we do.
We are like the political candidate whose image has been shaped by his opponent before he has shaped a public image for himself.
Except that we as a profession and an industry have had decades to shape our image, to tell our story. And yet we have done virtually nothing — nothing to explain our mission and our achievements. In an industry that is savvy about the role of public relations, we have been ignorant, indifferent, or inept about our own.
We have allowed people to take us for granted. And, worse still, we have allowed ourselves to become the object of caricature.
Surely now is the moment for that to stop. We must figure out how to make it stop. There is no time to waste.
~
A disturbing study released last month by the Pew Research Center for People & the Press showed that fewer than half of Americans say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community a lot. Only 33% said they would miss reading their local paper a lot if it were not available.
Twenty-nine percent say there are plenty of other sources of information — television, radio, the Internet — almost certainly without realizing how heavily those media outlets depend on the original reporting of newspapers.
That is an especially disturbing sign for our industry and our profession, which already is in a state of crisis.
The fact is: Our business model is broken.
Over the past few weeks, as the Globe’s own troubles have captured the headlines, many readers and media observers have been generous in sharing their view of what has gone wrong. So let me share those ideas with you:
we’re too liberal
we started pandering to conservatives
we need to better portray people of color because, especially given changing demographics
we’re too politically correct
we failed to cover Bush’s lies about the war
we blamed Bush for everything
we failed to understand that information wants to be free and how to make the most of it
we made everything free on the web. we should have charged
our stories are too long. people don’t have time
we dumbed down newspapers with short, superficial stories
there is too little voice in the paper, too few columnists
there is too much opinion in the paper
we failed to do enough to attract young readers
young readers just don’t like the medium of paper. in trying so hard to attract them, we abandoned our core, older readers
we needed more compelling stories, especially more narrative writing
people don’t have time to read our self-indulgent, long narrative stories
we abandoned foreign and national reporting that made the paper great
for too long, we held onto foreign and national reporting, which was all about our ego, when we should have focused on local
the paper was pillaged, with cutting and more cutting
we failed to move quickly enough to cut our costs and face up to the harsh reality that revenues will be lower
we raised the price of the paper, driving readers away
we never charged enough for the paper
So we’re going to fix all that.
The truth about our broken model may be too simple for people to accept:
Readers are going to the web; it is free and mobile and full of advantages. More importantly, advertisers are flocking there because it offers far more refined customer targeting and comes at a much cheaper cost. Most importantly, there has been a mass migration of classified advertising onto free sites, and that used to supply hundreds of millions of dollars in highly profitable revenue to newspapers.
Finally, on top of that, our papers today are being beaten to a pulp by a worldwide economic collapse. Newspaper advertising has declined about 30% this year, and most other advertising has fallen at a comparable rate.
I don’t have to relate for you the newspaper closings and Chapter 11 filings — and the layoffs throughout all media, including television, radio, and magazines. They are a sorry spectacle, a daily horror show.
The implications of today’s financial trauma are real and immediately evident: Substantive journalism — on a large scale, with constant commitment, adhering to professional standards — is at risk.
~
Good journalism, as you know, does not come cheap. The most powerful journalism — breakthrough journalism — can be shockingly expensive.
The first story in the Globe’s Pulitzer-winning investigation of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, and a 40-year cover-up, was published in January, 2002, but it required eight months of reporting and major litigation before a single word appeared in print. Another year of reporting by a team of eight staffers resulted in publication of 1,000 stories. The overall cost of this effort was probably more than $1 million in staff salaries, and tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs. But the journalism’s impact has been long-lasting and profound — in Boston, around the country, and around the world.
~
The challenge in the newsroom today can seem overwhelming:
When I started at The Miami Herald as a reporter 33 years ago, reporters were expected to produce for an afternoon edition and the main morning paper. We were plenty busy, but there was time for sufficient research and time to work on stories so that they stood out for their originality, context, and writing sparkle.
That is a far cry from what reporters, editors, photographers, and others confront today.
Today, our staff produces for the web, turning out news updates throughout the day, as a wire service does. We are taking and editing audio, as a radio station would. And like a television crew, we are shooting and editing video – of breaking news stories at one level, and documentary-quality video at another. We are blogging, engaging readers directly. And we motivate our readers to make their own contributions to our site with photos, comments, participation in chats and message boards, wikis, and even stories of their own.
Finally, for the next morning, we must publish a newspaper that is qualitatively different from what people have seen, heard, and read throughout the day on TV, radio, or the web. As difficult as it is to figure out the web, it is even more difficult to determine what tomorrow morning’s newspaper should be when so much information is available the previous day from so many sources.
In any event, we are trying to meet the challenges with sharply reduced newsroom staffs. And we must keep trying – at an even faster pace — as we witness further precipitous declines in revenue.
This is not easy. And it will get still harder.
How much harder? We do not know.
We do not know what our resources will be long-term. We do not know what our resources will be short-term.
As I mentioned, advertising revenues for newspapers are plunging 30% so far this year. This suggests more cuts, in personnel and maybe also in compensation.
And it inevitably will mean less capacity to engage in ambitious, enterprising journalism.
Tellingly, the current editor of the Baltimore Sun recently declared the end of the “six-part series.”
Now, I don’t particularly care about the fate of the six-part series. But if his remark is code for the end of reporting that requires a major investment of resources — people, time, and money — then I do care, because it means we will see a huge void in American journalism. And it will allow people who are powerful or crafty, or both, to engage in wrongdoing without fear of being held accountable.
I’m not just talking about the potential absence of a series that was six months to a year in the works. I’m talking about the absence of a project that requires a week, or two, or three, of work.
This is not work that is driven by journalists’ egos, no matter what some newspaper owners might think (thankfully, not at my company). This is work that readers want.
At the Globe, most recently, readers have responded with enthusiasm to our work on the tight relationship between the Speaker of the House and lobbyists, which led to his resignation early this year; to our stories on firefighters abusing the disability system; and to our stories on public officials exploiting the state pension system at taxpayers’ expense.
Readers believe that if we are not digging, we are not doing our jobs. And they are right.
That said, the Baltimore Sun’s editor is correct in arguing that we are headed for a radically new model. Unfortunately, we do not know what that new model will be. And we do not know how much substantive journalism it can support.
Imagine a surfer looking toward the horizon trying to identify with any certainty which of the thousands of waves in sight will be his next one, identifying how big it will be and how far it will carry him. Our ability to forecast seems that iffy, that impossible. The horizon is that bewildering. What appears to be a wave that offers good surfing is, then isn’t. And it’s impossible to pinpoint how the ocean will take shape. Ultimately, there should be a good wave. We’ll know it when it’s upon us. But we could also find ourselves with one disappointment after another.
To date, none of the online-only models I have seen come close to offering the breadth and depth of what we do today. They leave unanswered the question of how difficult, time-consuming investigative reporting can be funded.
The emaciated online news operation that constitutes the remains of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer — 20 people, most of them producers — is not a promising sign.
None of this, of course, will quiet the pundit class.
Over time, you will hear and see people speak with absolute conviction about what the new media model must be. You might want to test my own thesis: The more certain someone is about what the new model must be, the less responsibility they have for actually carrying it out.
~
I want to be careful not to send a message of despair. Because I firmly believe that there is a lot about new media tools and techniques that is healthy, even thrilling.
Technology allows journalists today to tell stories in ways that were never possible before, to reach audiences larger than ever, and to build a tight and more intimate bond with the public. It also allows journalists to quickly draw upon the knowledge of others, to invite experts and ordinary people into the journalistic process.
These new technologies have a democratizing effect. There is no need to work for a newspaper, a magazine, a TV station, or a radio station. Information can come from anyone, anywhere.
All of this has allowed an entrepreneurial culture to take hold in a field that has long been dominated by media giants.
~
Those of us who have been around for awhile are naturally inclined to mourn the passing of the old ways and to find fault with so much that is new. But neither nostalgia nor fear will do us any good.
What is needed now from journalists such as yourselves is a business courage to match the courage you have shown in the practice of journalism.
Many of you, if not all of you, have built your professional reputations by going places you’ve never been before, trying things you’ve never done before, putting yourselves repeatedly to the test.
And yet many in the field — even those who rank among the most daring journalistically — hold on for dear life to a professional model that is old and familiar.
We cannot bear to let go. We love it too much. And so we hang on to old ways and old work rules and old formats and an old relationship with our readers…….Well … time to let go.
Time to be as entrepreneurial as the entrepreneurs who aim to do us in. Time to try and fail, and then try again without shame or embarrassment.
If we honor the history of our profession, if we honor the mission of our profession, if we honor colleagues who have sacrificed everything in service of that mission, we must keep trying.
I think back to how the Boston Globe’s Elizabeth Neuffer handed out pens to children in the countries she covered, saying “This is the greatest weapon of all — you must learn to use it.”
The pen is a mighty weapon still, and yet now we have new tools, new weapons, that we must learn to use equally well.
The message Elizabeth carried to others as she went about her good work applies to all of us, and her mission remains ours. It is time to show that old values and core principles can survive even as journalism takes on new forms and relies on new instruments.
I know it will be hard. I know it is unnerving. But, I’ll tell you this: We have no other choice.
