Passion for the Job

By Lena Grosse

“The job itself is awesome!” Jessica Van Sack emphasized multiple times when asked about print journalism. Ms. Van Sack clearly has a passion for her job, even though journalism has not always been smooth sailing for her. In general, print journalism is not the most secure job market and Ms. Van Sack stated that those who get a job are the lucky ones. She explained that every January, the possibility exists for any journalist that he/she might be laid off. Beyond the general concerns journalists have, Ms. Van Sack’s response was similar to that of the Boston Globe’s Ainsley and Baron, who I had written a post about as well. In general, the future of print journalism looks bleak. The way Van Sack put it, “By giving away [the newspapers’] content for free online, we shot ourselves in the foot” because she says giving something away for free is a way of devaluing it. Moreover, it is now somewhat impossible for newspapers to start charging for content because there is so much competition. There is no solution for now and anyone who is thinking of a print journalism career should know what to expect.

Yet Van Sack loves her job. She has always been a print journalist and even a foray into broadcast journalism could not change her career path. She said that in broadcast she learned to write at lightning speed, but that she could never see herself in front of a camera. She said she is much more of a writer who likes to take her time figuring out how to phrase her articles. She did say that broadcast journalism was a good experience, as was being the editor for the Patriot Ledger, but that both of those jobs are over when the journalist goes home. As a broadcast journalist there is a lot of stress when trying to reach the immediate deadline, but after that the journalist can go home. As an editor similarly, one can does not have to take work home with him/her and it is a better job for a family person. Van Sack, however, likes to be responsible for her own work and so her next job as a general assignment reporter for the Boston Herald was a better fit. She discussed the advantages of writing for the Herald as opposed to the Patriot Ledger because her stories had a much greater impact. The Herald offered a larger audience, as well as more riveting topics than small-town politics. Furthermore, working for a smaller newspaper, Van Sack had covered all aspects of one specific town, but at the Herald she was given a beat. Her first beat was crime because she was the Police Bureau Chief, but she had difficulties in gaining access to the information she needed. Covering the Boston Police Department is not easy since information is controlled and the police follow strict guidelines on how to work with the media. Furthermore, she was not an avid crime follower and finds her current beat, politics, more interesting to cover. Jessica Van Sack has had plenty of experience in journalism and I was glad I had the chance to find out about how her career evolved.

Sitting in her small warm office at the State House with one other colleague, Jessica Van Sack was willing to discuss the difficulties of journalism and its future, but still remained passionate about her job. She added that she hoped she wasn’t being too discouraging because being a journalist is very rewarding. Van Sack also gave me some advice saying that if I was interested in journalism, I should learn the basics of journalism and get as much online experience as possible. Personally, Ms. Van Sack likes to blog and said she would be starting one on politics soon. It was a great interview and I was glad she was so candid with me.

I have learned a lot from following Jessica Van Sack and from the interview with her. In keeping with her advice, I have used this blog as my way of publishing and gaining journalistic experience. It was a good starting point, but I will not continue this blog.

Thank you for reading what I had to say.

Finding the Focus

By Lena Grosse

“Republican gubernatorial hopeful Charlie Baker has picked state Sen. Richard R. Tisei as his running mate” was the opening line in the lead of Jessica Van Sack’s article on November 23, 2009. The article focused on Tisei’s experience and the fact that he was the youngest Republican ever elected to the legislature. Beyond the article I would not have known about the controversy surrounding this announcement, but I caught a glimpse of the headlines of related articles, which read “Lt. governor attacks Baker running mate pick” and “Site slams Charlie Baker’s lieutenant pick.” Van Sack’s article was very straightforward and the news peg was Baker’s choice and announcement, but that was not the end of the story.

There were two more aspects of newsworthiness that Tisei brought with him, the ‘insider’ aspect and the fact that he is openly homosexual. The first article dealt with Lt. governor Timothy Murray focusing on the fact that Tisei has been in the State House since he was elected in 1984 and is thus an ‘insider’ and not a force of change. Moreover, Murray also talked about Baker serving as secretary of administration and finance as well as being a part of the “Big Dig” project mentioned in an earlier blog post. So neither Baker and Tisei could necessarily promise change because they have both been in the system for a very long time. The news peg on this story was conflict and it was a good story as it portrayed both sides because the Herald also reported Baker/Tisei’s response to Murray’s claims.

The last story was also one that was necessary to be reported, but I do not think that there needs to be a focus on Tisei’s sexual orientation. The last story was about a controversial conservative website that was attacking Tisei “for voting against the income tax rollback in 2000 while supporting abortion rights and gay marriage.”  By picking Tisei as his running mate, Baker is supposedly trying to reach the more liberal voters and they are in fact both seen as liberal Republicans. The conservative site that bashed Tisei should be mentioned as an inappropriate response, yet I feel like there is too much media attention in general on the sexual orientation of Tisei. I personally liked the news peg that Jessica Van Sack chose because it was not controversial, just informative. I also felt that the second article was justified in discussing Tisei’s position in the government. The third article was also well-written, but concentrated on a topic that was overused. That is why I thought the other two articles were more original.

Leaving the Reader Well-informed

By Lena Grosse

On November 2^nd, the headline “Day care disaster ends in doggy death” caught my eye. Jessica Van Sack’s article pertained to a mauled Shih Tzu in a day care facility for dogs in Stoughton, MA. Two more articles then followed this article, which were related and dealt with other aspects of the dog day care topic.

The first story was about the tragedy that had occurred; the angle chosen was the dog’s owners’ grief. Harley, the Shih Tzu, had been an essential part of the family and the owners were filled with guilt. Although, they had been responsible enough to look up three different day care facilities, the dog’s stay had still been fatal. Thus the first story was very straightforward and focused on the event alone.

The second article used the tragedy as a starting point, but was written using a completely different angle. The article titled “Puppy-sitting biz ‘unregulated’” indicated that incidents like the Shih Tzu death could occur again based on the way day care businesses were currently run.

Van Sack wrote, “Despite pooch-sitting centers popping up inHub neighborhoods and throughout the Bay State, the businesses are “basically unregulated,” said Brian Adams, spokesman for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”

She also mentioned in the article that Sen. Patricia D. Jehlen (D-Somerville) was pushing an animal control bill that addressed the issues at hand. So the day care death fueled the debate on dog day care and the Boston Herald was able to elaborate on the topic as well as put it in perspective.

The last article was the big finale though. It strengthened the article on animal care regulation and also added another factor to the Stoughton dog death. The first article had already established that Harley, the Shih Tzu, had been killed because he was left alone with other dogs that were much bigger than he was. This was information that had not been disclosed by the owners of the day care business, but that was only part of what the owners withheld. In fact, the day care owners had been running their business illegally.  “Dog day care operating illegally” was the last article published on the subject and it indicated that the day care owners were only licensed as dog walkers, but not as caretakers.

Overall, this set of stories intrigued me because I was able to see how one story or event had led to research that had uncovered the information that resulted in the creation of the final article. Readers were left with a solved puzzle and extensive background knowledge on the subject of dog day care. Through the stories, readers were able to gain an inside look at the business, as well as indirect advice on choosing day cares.

Globetrotting

By Lena Grosse

The future of journalism was on everyone’s mind at Emerson College on Thursday, November 19, 2009.  Eager young journalists gathered at the college’s Semel Theater to hear from two distinguished professionals in the field, especially about the expectations future journalists will have to live up to. The Boston Globe publisher P. Steve Ainsley and editor Martin “Marty” Baron were speaking at a forum where Ted Gup, the Journalism Department Chair, questioned each of them on various issues.

Even though Steve Ainsley is retiring soon, he and Marty Baron have thought about the future of the Boston Globe and journalism in general, especially finding a way to make online news profitable. Ainsley said, “the kind of thing that I think today most newspapers are backing away from is the so-called ‘paid wall,’ where if you want to go to the site for any reason whatsoever, it’s going to cost you.” That is why micro-pay models such as Pandora intrigue Ainsley, where listeners can choose to pay a three-dollar fee monthly so they will not have to deal with audio commercials. Baron, similarly, discussed hybrid models like that of the Wall Street Journal, where a story is free or costs a fee. Ainsley and Baron did not only discuss business models though, they also addressed future journalists, as well as the readership.

When asked what character traits and skill set the perfect candidate for the job would have, Marty Baron said, “[the future journalist] would be human and to be a good journalist you have to have a heart, a soul, and a conviction and a determination.” Both Ainsley and Baron agreed that a person with a passion for journalism is what editors and publishers look for. Then the second step is skill and here they made an important distinction, which has been created by modern journalism. Journalists must know the basic skills of reporting and writing, but future journalists will need to know all the different ways of transmitting information as well as the target audience of each form of distribution. They will need to be flexible and knowledgeable enough to be capable of delivering news in any way. Baron also mentioned that most young journalists are more willing to engage with the readers in a variety of ways, such as multimedia, and they are thus more creative. Moreover, Baron sees the future journalist as someone who operates more as an entrepreneur.

Ainsley then pointed out that the news organization will need to be just as flexible as the individual journalist and it will need to take risks. “The products that we put out have to be considerably more flexible than the industry I grew up in. The whole industry is wrestling with this concept of paid or unpaid on the Internet,” Ainsley commented on the current situation. He also added, “the journalistic organizations that thrive are going to be those that take smart but calculated risks on a regular basis.”  Furthermore, Baron said that the Boston Globe currently has more tools at its disposal than ever before and has beaten news radio stations with its video and documentary materials.   The Boston Globe has thus become more than just a newspaper. Based on these developments, both men stated that they were optimistic about the future. Ainsley also noted that readership is higher than ever and that readers are far more discriminating when it comes the source of their news.

Overall the acoustics in the theater were not optimal, but the two men managed to capture the crowd and bring home their message. They reiterated that the journalism of the future at its core will still be based on traditional values and that journalists will write their stories because they believe that they are changing their community for the good. Yet, they also pointed out the qualities future journalists would need to have to flourish in the current climate. Baron, however, left the future journalists with hope, saying, “the opportunities [in the field] are actually expanding, not contracting.”

 

Global Comparison

By Lena Grosse

This week I will focus my attention on the Boston Globe. Normally, I follow Boston Herald’s Jessica Van Sack, but this week I will compare the Boston Herald’s article on the mayoral election to the Boston Globe’s coverage of the same event. I will then create a second post that only concerns the Boston Globe’s publisher Steve Ainsley and editor Marty Baron who spoke at Emerson College on Thursday.

More descriptive language and imagery was the first of a few differences I noted between the Boston Herald’s and the Boston Globe’s coverage. The two articles I compared were “Mayor Menino clinches historic fifth term” and “5^th term for Menino” by the Boston Herald staff and the Boston Globe staff respectively. I chose the election because it was the most important event that took place in Boston in the last couple of weeks.

To begin with, there was one factual discrepancy I noticed in both articles, the Boston Herald article read that 109,000 people had voted; the Boston Globe article had 110,000 voters. I thought a more effective way of reporting the results was the way WBUR did by just stating the percent which was the same in all three sources, Menino’s 57 percent to Flaherty’s 42 percent. Other than the dissimilarity in voters, however, the Globe and Herald articles differed solely in writing style and some choice of content.

The angle that the Boston Globe’s article focused on was the historical importance of Thomas Menino’s victory and much less on the rivalry between him and Councilor at Large Michael Flaherty. In the lead paragraph the Globe staff wrote,  “sixteen years after he rose to power as an unassuming master of street-level minutiae, Thomas Michael Menino cemented his place as a singular force in urban American politics yesterday.” They did not mention Flaherty’s name, but instead emphasized the longevity of Menino’s reign. The Herald team, on the other hand, started their lead in the same way, but finished with “deflecting scathing campaign trail criticism and decisively rolling over challenger Michael Flaherty,” underlining the competitive aspect of Boston’s latest elections.

The Globe article did go into Menino’s competition with Flaherty, but the coverage did not indicate as much of a battle as the Herald article did, which was especially noticeable in the way the consequences of Flaherty’s defeat were portrayed in both papers. While the Herald staff wrote “the loss leaves Flaherty, a South Boston lawyer and former prosecutor, out of Boston politics for the first time in a decade,” the tone of the Globe article was much more optimistic. “Flaherty, whose tenure on the council ends in January, left open the possibility of another run for office” the Globe staff wrote, adding “Flaherty ended his speech by telling his supporters, ‘This is just the beginning,’” in the same context.

The Boston Globe went further and discussed the difficulties that Flaherty had faced as a challenger, such as the campaign budget. With 700,000 dollars more at his disposal, Menino was able to finance television advertisements while Flaherty was not. The Boston Herald did not write about these problems, but instead wrote about Menino’s pledge to keep property taxes low and his ominous message that 2010 will be just as difficult as the past year. This call to action was missing from the Globe article, which only mentioned that the city had faced a tough year, but without mention of Menino and his plans.

Both the Globe staff and the Herald staff, however, included that this was the most competitive mayoral election Menino had faced in his last 16 years in office and that the ideas that Flaherty brought to the table will be ones Menino will have to face. Starting his fifth term in office in January, Menino already knows there will be new challenges for him to overcome, but he has the residents of Boston behind him, supporting their leader.

Agree to Disagree

By Lena Grosse

With the mayoral election out of the way, Boston Herald’s Jessica Van Sack has focused her past local politics articles on the senate candidates. Namely, the Democrats, Martha Coakley, Steve Pagliuca, Michael Capuano, and Alan Khazei.

There seems to be one trend in her recent articles and that is the conflict of interests among the candidates. Out of the seven articles she published, three were about Democrats criticizing one another. Her article “Senate rivals bicker over healthcare” focused largely on Michael Capuano’s criticism of front-runner Martha Coakley’s opposition of the health care package. Similarly an article published three days later, “Candidates gang up on Attorney General” was largely based on Capuano’s criticism of Coakley, this time for not adequately penalizing the contractors of the rerouting of the 1-93 (Big Dig). Yet, the criticism reverted back to the health care debate. There was much less about the other candidates, although Van Sack’s latest article was about Steve Pagliuca’s call for a campaign finance reform. Pagliuca, however, did not want to adhere to this reform himself so including rival candidate, Alan Khazei’s criticism is a logical step. Thus, the main news peg for the Senate race seems to be conflict.

Especially in comparison to her recent series or string of articles on the mayoral election on November 4^th, Van Sack’s articles on the senate race concentrate more on disagreements amongst the candidates than on external perceptions or the senate race itself. Moreover, each democratic candidate has been characterized in Van Sack’s articles: Coakley is the front-runner, Capuano is the former mayor of Somerville, Pagliuca is the Bain Capital or Celtics honcho, and Khazei is the City Year co-founder, but more importantly the non-profit entrepreneur. Something I noted was that the harshest criticisms that Van Sack wrote about were between the candidates that had similar attributes, Coakley and Capuano, who both work for the government and Pagliuca and Khazei, the businessmen.  Regardless of the candidates involved though, discord is the key focus and that is what makes this race interesting.

Follow the Beat

By Lena Grosse

“Mayor Thomas M. Menino has again made history, extending his streak as the city’s longest serving mayor by winning an unprecedented fifth consecutive term, deflecting scathing campaign trail criticism and decisively rolling over challenger Michael Flaherty.”

This was the lead for Jessica Van Sack’s first article on the mayoral election on November 4. It was one of five articles that Ms. Van Sack published on the subject. Each article was written from a different angle, focusing on Menino and his supporters, but also on those who were unhappy with the election. I thought her coverage was all encompassing and that she displayed multiple points of view well without favoring one over the other.

I also noted that this was one facet of her coverage since her beat is local coverage as well as crime and justice. This gives her a broad range of topics to report on, but to insure that she is able to do in depth reporting, she also publishes article series. In these article series, she publishes up to five articles on one story either consecutively or following up a few days later. The latest of these series was the aforementioned one on the mayoral election. Incidently, they were also the first articles she had written on the election since October 19.

The other articles she published that were not part of a series were mostly local coverage and she would sometimes be continuing a story someone else had covered or she would start covering a story, but someone else would finish it. For example, she wrote an article on the missing Quincy man, yet another reporter wrote about finding the body.

Now that I have gotten used to the pattern in which she publishes, I enjoy reading multiple perspectives on one subject and then finding out about something new. I think the articles Ms. Van Sack publishes have enough variety in them and that she does not wear out subjects that she covers in depth. I think this is a very thorough reporting style and gives a journalist a decent amount of background knowledge. Moreover, Ms. Van Sack also has the chance to represent different angles of the same story, so she is able to use all her skills.