In the
spring of 2016, I returned to the Amazon to find the jungle changed.
Motoring
up the river out of Iquitos for the first time in eight years, I watched the
seemingly endless flooded forest and the small villages of ribereños silently roll past. At a glance,
the lush river basin looked just as it had on my last Peru trip, but along the
tree line came glimpses of a changed world.
Every few
miles, even in dense jungle, a steel cell tower crested the treetops.
It’s easy
to mock wireless technology. An American sidewalk crammed with people ignoring
each other while hypnotized by little screens all but invites scorn. But the
precipitous leap into wireless technology has transformed the lives of millions
of Third World people. The fishers and manioc farmers of the Amazon basin had
no access to a telephone before cellular service. Now, they can speak daily
with far-flung relatives. They can call a medical clinic for advice. And, they
can participate in democracy by being informed voters. From a seemingly remote
jungle, they can touch a world of information with their fingers.
This
small device is the most powerful tool for disseminating and sharing
information invented yet, so it goes without saying that journalists must make
the same technological leap as the Amazon ribereños.
Journalists can join, or fall off the web of information that reaches out to
countless millions.
What
endures for journalists are the basic standards that have driven news gathering
for many decades. Be accurate. Be fair. Be interesting. Be kind. Be brave.
Whether reporting on events or trends, people or processes, the basic tenets of
journalism remain, despite the delivery methods.
As a
career journalist, I trust my grasp of the Five Ws – the Who, What, When, Where
and Why - that we weave into narratives. But for journalists ourselves, the H
is always changing – the How.
My first
job was at a newspaper that relied on 19t-century technologies. Type was set with linotype machines; there
was a steaming little foundry in the composing room where metal was melted for
reuse; and newspaper pages were built as 75-pound flats of metal. Photographs
were scanned on a spinning drum and transmitted on telephone, in a process that
took about 11 minutes with mediocre results. Now I can use my phone to transmit
live video and sound to everyone in the world.
The
unimaginable is now real.
Our
duty as educators is to carry enduring values and standards forward to emerging
technologies, to facilitate the generational transition and growth of our
chosen field. When I read of the array of platforms for conveying information –
text for explanation and analysis, live audio and video for immediacy, still
photos to freeze a moment in time, graphics to present complex concepts in a direct form – I
see this transition as an invitation to refine and improve both journalism and
my teaching.
The next time I walk into a
classroom, the students awaiting me will have grown up with a digital device
close at hand. I grew up when phone numbers were seven digits and you spoke to
an operator to make a collect call. But the present tense is inescapable. If my
students are going to acknowledge my credibility, I have to be at ease in their
world.
My first attempts to master
multimedia journalism were stumbling. As a director of photography, I had the
Associated Press to help me through the long, incremental transition to digital
cameras and digital darkrooms, but my stumbles were frequent. Two years of
blogging on a newspaper site with little response and struggles to build a
website using ready-made templates made me wonder if I could excel in this
environment.
So it’s time to dive into the
digital deep end.
My best hope for my multimedia
education is that this immersive program of study will empower me to immerse my
students in both the journalistic skills and the skills to move gracefully
between platforms to tell their stories. Each class is full of fresh voices and
unique viewpoints. Some are driven to change the world, some wants to capture
its beauty, some want to make us laugh.
There is a room for all of us in
this web of media.
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