Journalism as a Creative form of Art

According to a friendly film reviewer who I spoke with in the SXSW press suite,  I am the only blogger at SXSW with press credentials. Now, on the one hand, that  means absolutely nothing other than I got a free badge, and have access to the press room. However, on the other hand, I know that nothing is truly free in this world. If I am in fact the only credentialed blogger at the conference, then I feel it’s my responsibility (for better, or for worse) to leave the SXSW people with the impression that bloggers are a legitimate and valuable part of the press.

 

Thus, the mission I seem to have accepted is to ensure that more bloggers get press credentials next year. Now, this means I will have to ::shudder:: produce something that will be considered legit journalism. And by Journalism, I don’t mean reporting what happened; rather, I see journalism as an institution dedicated to enriching the public’s understanding of events which they are unable to see with their own eyes. If I was only interested in reporting who/what/when/where/why, I’d simply cut and paste some press releases. That said, there are a few big problems…

 

What valuable, and unique function can I serve when nearly 60 percent of conference goers are going to blog it anyway? Taking detailed notes of the sessions at the conference simply doesn’t seem to cut it. The conference sessions already produce more than one set of detailed notes. Pretending to be a reporter for wired might get me a good grade in a journalism class, however the reporters for wired, and the multitude of other tech publications present already fill that niche… and clearly they will do it better than I.

 

So, my solution is the title of this post: To practice journalism as a creative form of art. Basically, this form of journalism has two steps. Firstly, it consists of observing an event, observing how it is described by multiple and diverse sources, and making judgements as to what impression the sum of those reports would have on a reader. The journalists see’s the sum of the first step as the picture; metaphorically speaking, my job is to add smells, sounds, sensations, to that picture. By that, I don’t mean writing some piece of shit descriptive essay. I finding those little things that aren’t news worthy themselves, but when added to traditional journalism, could greatly enliven the impression the story has on the reader.

 

 To put it another way, were as traditional journalism is concerned with only the most important of facts, and reporting them in the clearest, and most concise manner possible, this form of journalism approaches a news event as a novel, but of course is prohbiden from making anything up. This “novel” of a news event has entertaining wonderful characters and dialogues; its plot is full of powerful metaphors, and archetypes; beyond simply informing the reader of the facts of the event, this form of journalism seeks to help the reader relate the event to their own lives… to convince them that they should care, but to do so without the reader even being aware of it. Hopefully, the reader would simply think of it as an entertaining essay. The reason I say that this is in “art” is because I don’t think very many people have the type of mind that can see these characters, metaphors, and archetypes. I suppose the “talent” is to be able to filter out information that interferes.

 

After reading over this, I realize I’ve explained this concept badly. Indeed, I myself am still struggling to convert this vague abstract idea into something logical. To be honest, I’m not even sure if I’m on to anything worth my time. I tell you what, give me a night to sleep on this. I may very well decide that this idea is shit in the morning. Then again, often great ideas come as a result of exploring terrible ones. In addition, I've found the best way to get feedback from readers is to say something stupid. :-)