When your hopes get turned upside down...

I built my life like my bike on a rigid frame
nothing bends, only breaks into pieces and pieces
I wait for hope to arrive but it never came
Leaving me with pain inside
I'm going off the deep end.
-"The Deep End" by Crossfade

Teague wrote up this story on Jim Newton's trip to Chico.

I still have my doubts that anything real is going to come out of this.

Maybe I'm not so much frustrated in that people aren't picking this story up, or that is being ignored in favor of ripping on Mitch Albom's issues as in the real "what's the big deal?" attitude most people in the journalism community are really giving this.

What am I talking about? I'm talking about the things I've seen written on this by journalists around places like the letters written to Jim Romenesko. Here are a couple highlights:

From afar, and after reading the LA Times correction regarding the Chico State hazing story, I have to say that the reporter in question is, perhaps, taking it a little too hard; and whatever national media is criticizing the story, is, well, overdoing it. Then again, it is LA, one of the two centers of media in the United States, so I guess fishbowl treatment comes with the territory. Still, the mistakes pale in comparison to some of the boneheaded mistakes I'd made in the past -- to wit, naming the WRONG dead guy in a fatal car accident -- and thank my lucky stars that my most aggregious errors occurred while working at relatively obscure little papers in the Midwest. The errors were painful, of the kind where at least one person wanted to string me up. They were also, in some ways, necessary evils -- they helped me become a better, more detail conscious, fact-checking, discerning reporter. But I remember the gut-turning feeling of making those mistakes, and can empathize.

Yeah, his gut is really turning. Read his mea culpa. If you can find an actual apology, email me at rlahue@orion-online.net and point it out. Because I can't seem to find him admitting where he screwed up and in what ways he screwed up. Mea culpa letters tend to have those things clearly defined. You also don't release them via email through your buddies.

Be a journalist and fess up.

Actually, I think what's happening in this situation is frustrating me as much as scaring me. That I'm going into an industry where making both a vast number and horrid mistakes is no big deal.

Seriously, whatever happened to accuracy?

Since when did papers start needing their arms twisted into a knot to print a correction?

I grew up with my dad harping on me for trying to cut corners. He taught me there wasn't any purpose to trying to get through with a half-hearted job the first time, because then you'll have to go back and fix your mess, which will wind up taking more time and effort than if had just done the job right at the start.

This is my first touch with so-called "big time" journalism. And what I'm seeing--slipshodness, snobbery and elitism--doesn't exactly thrill me.

This is an industry in danger. The old guard might try to deny it, but it definitly is. The only way journalism is going to survive in a world where electronic communication is getting faster and faster and making it tougher and tougher for information on paper--pulp paper at that--to compete is to cut down the mistakes. Whether it's viewed as necessary or not, these evils have to get the boot.

I'm definitly thought about quitting. Worked through my arguments about why I'm going to need to stay in college another two years because I'm changing majors 12 units short of a Bachelor's degree. Pictured how to answer my friends down at The Orion when I pull out of the editor interviews and tell them I'm not coming back in any way, shape or form next semester.

I came in here because of the demand for details and accuracy. I came because I could be successful in a business and profession that not everybody can thrive in. As I've come to learn, if you've achieved some success (which working for the Times is), you can half-ass a story and not do your homework beforehand and have it be wholly acceptable. Details and accuracy go to the wayside for word writing that belongs in the script of an Aaron Spelling drama.

My first drafts suck (read through this entry and you'll probably discover that). Senior year and I can still get back copy that looked like bled ink and died. I haven't bought a new edition of the AP Stylebook after my copy disappeared down at the office one day. It wasn't until my tenth week that I learned what a "nut graph" is. I've caused more than one headache for editors because I'm not as aggressive with the telephones as they want me to be. I miss an obvious question at least every other story that requires an immediate callback.

How damaging would it be for this industry if I were to just get up and walk into the sunset right now, middle fingers raised in the air over my head? Not at all.

But, (I hope) thankfully, typing that out above has been about the longest that those thoughts have come into my mind.

I'm in journalism not because of what it is. If I was, I would have never gone into a manipulative, power-mad, liberally biased industry to begin with.

I'm in journalism because of what it is supposed to be.

Those times I've called back and double-checked with people about information that I started having doubts about weren't unnecessary and in vain.

There still might not be a thing as "over-researching a story."

There's still some value in not using statements like "orgiastic apogee" in a business where you're supposed to write clear and simple.

Just because stories with a horrid number of fact errors getting printed "happens all the time" and there's never been a true correction doesn't mean I have to do it.

This doesn't mean I'm letting this whole L.A. Times Chico story incident fall by the wayside. I still think Eric Slater should be publically whipped for writing that garbage (figurativly, not literally--getting that out of the way before anybody asks. I mean, at the very least, he should write an actual apology that goes in the same spot as that story ran in the California section). But any thoughts I might have thrown about before about potentially quitting journalism because such fault is so accepted are gone.

I mean, if pulling stunts like this means you eventually get hired at a big-time paper, imagine what can happen if you actually do things right.

This hick's still planning on raising some hell over the next few years. Stay tuned.