Matty in court. Photo by Joel Thurtell.
jour·nal·ist noun
1 a : a person engaged in journalism; especially : a writer or editor for a news medium
b : a writer who aims at a mass audience
By Joel Thurtell
The kicker to Anne Jarvis’s excellent Windsor Star column about the jailing of billionaire Matty Moroun was a quote from yours truly calling it “a hell of a story” and describing me as “a Detroit blogger and former journalist.”
“FORMER journalist”?
Where’d she get that idea? (Hint: She did not make it up.)
Isn’t what I’m doing right now — tapping out letters that resolve into words and sentences and paragraphs for a column of reporting, commenting, ruminating, bloviating — are these not all the activities that journalists traditionally do when they produce written material for newspapers, magazines, newsletters, whatever — “news media”?
Whether crap or cream, it’s called journalism when THEY grind it out.
Am I not “a writer or editor for a news medium”?
Do I not write for “a mass audience”?
Let’s see: The audience of joelontheroad.com is not huge, yet in the past seven days, JOTR’s had 5,642 hits with 11,862 page views; in the past 12 months, it’s 216,289 hits and 502,456 page views.
More than half a million page views in a year — I’d say that comes close to the definition of a “mass audience,” per Merriam-Webster.
What about “news medium”?
Lots of ways to define “news medium.”
For me, it resolves into two classes:
1) Media that reflexively report news; these are outlets that regurgitate whatever other outlets are reporting; it’s a journalism made up of mirror images with variations that are mostly insignificant.
2) Media that break new ground in reporting.
The current reportage on Matty Moroun is worth looking at.
Man, did the jailing of Matty take the prize! Everyone seems to have weighed in. Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, even the Times out of New York esteemed it a brief.
Why, even I was there, took some pictures and filed a report.
But several days ago, I published another story about Matty.
I warned Gov. Rick Snyder to look out. If he thinks the Detroit-Wayne County Port Authority might be a way to work around the Matty-controlled Legislature and get a new US-Canada bridge built at Detroit, he’d better think again.
The port authority is in Matty’s pocket.
Seems like a story.
Okay, truth to tell, the idea that I am a “former journalist”?
Anne Jarvis got that idea from me.
We were standing outside the courtroom of Wayne County Circuit Judge Prentis Edwards.
It was the morning of January 12, just minutes after Judge Edwards sent Matty and his chief deputy to jail.
I was recalling for Jarvis that the “former journalist” label was stuck on me by none other than Dan “The Rubber” Stamper, president of the company that runs Matty Moroun’s Ambassador Bridge.
The Rubber was Matty’s co-inmate during their sojourn at the Wayne County Jail.
I mentioned to Jarvis that “former journalist” is what Dan “The Rubber” Stamper called me in September, 2008, right after I started blogging about Matty.
I guess the bridge owner and his henchman didn’t much like what I was writing about them.
I told Jarvis I’m beginning to think maybe I should accept that I am a “former journalist.”
Maybe there are some advantages.
Bloggers such as I run into this prejudice.
I would not be surprised to learn that The Rubber got the idea from a journalist.
A while back, I was at a party with some print newspaper people. Their animosity towards bloggers was very evident. In their minds, the fact that they work for a newspaper makes them superior to people who don’t, yet manage to convey ideas and information to the world.
“What do you write about?”
Obviously, they don’t read JOTR.
“Anything I feel like.”
That may describe the biggest difference between bloggers and traditional journalists.
If I feel like writing about my dog in the pretend voice of my dog, nothing stops me.
When I wrote about Matty Moroun’s shotgun totin’ goon kicking me out of a public park, nobody told me not to write in the voice of anger and upset that a person naturally feels when bullied by a tyrannical billionaire.
If I’d still been working for the Detroit Free Press when that hooligan came after me, do you think I’d have written the same story?
Do you think I’d have written ANY story?
No Free Press editor would have touched that story, either as I wrote it or in any other form.
The chain of command would have clobbered me.
“Whatever I feel like.”
Here’s something else I told my print journalist interrogators: I correct my errors when they are pointed out. How many newspapers do the same, rather than waffle and wiggle and squirm?
I know newspaper journalists are slapping stories on the Web without the grace of copy editing.
Print journalists in particular feel threatened by bloggers, even though most of them now are blogging.
Their prejudice comes out in ways that can sabotage bloggers.
I am convinced that they work it into the brains of their sources in business and government.
A while back, a federal agency noted in its response to my Freedom of Information Act request that I am not a journalist.
Now, who was that FOIA officer working for, the government or the media?
In such a case, it’s a definite disadvantage not being seen as a REAL journalist.
REAL journalists can try to make a case for free photocopying of records, arguing that there is a public interest in their research.
Whether there truly is a public interest or maybe instead only a prurient interest is beside the point; a status quo reporter — one who works for an establishment outlet — automatically is accorded a privilege just as reflexively denied to bloggers.
A “former” journalist is pretty close to being a non-journalist, and if journalism is a fraternity or sorority or some other kind of elite social society, then being “former” is as good as being outside the clubhouse.
So far, I’ve been talking about the downsides to being a former or non-journalist.
Let’s pretend, first of all, that there is nothing absurd about the idea that someone who is reporting on events, albeit only in electronic form, is not a journalist by definition.
Could there be advantages to being a non-journalist?
What might such advantages be?
Well, as a non-journalist, I can do work that amounts to journalism without having to play by the phony rules of the journalistic establishment.
The shotgun totin’ goon story is a prime example.
I can accept a hug from Deb Sumner, an outspoken critic of Matty Moroun, and hug her right back.
An orthodox journalist might condemn that act as an indication of bias.
Well?
What about Matty?
Matty didn’t try to hug me, so who knows what might have happened.
Curious thing: Deb Sumner has been a vocal part of the Ambassador Bridge picture for years, yet there were mainstream journalists in court who had no idea who she was.I can be interviewed by Bill Gallagher of Fox News and Anne Jarvis of the Windsor Star and not feel angst at being part of the story while covering it for my blog.
If I am a former or non-journalist, how did it come to pass that the Wayne State University journalism faculty named me 2011 Journalist of the Year?
Why, for that matter, am I allowed to subscribe to the Columbia Journalism Review at the professional rate of $10 a year?
How did it happen that a non-journalist like me was able to author a journalism textbook that has been assigned reading for college journalism students?
Why did Bill Gallagher and Anne Jarvis think it relevant to seek quotations from the proprietor of a lowly blog?
The beauty of practicing journalism as a non-journalist is this: He or she does not need to conform to social and behavioral codes that regulate the club of orthodox journalists.
The so-called rules often render orthodox journalists halfway deaf and blind. And largely inarticulate.
I told Anne Jarvis the jailing of Matty Moroun is a hell of a story.
But I wonder: If a mere blogger had not been harassed by one of Matty’s goons back in September 2008, would the judge’s courtroom have been packed with mainstream media to witness a judge expressing frustration with a powerful rich man on January 12, 2012?
Journalism is not about clubs, it’s not about hoisting beers with reporter comrades and recounting war stories depicting journalists as some kind of elite class of better-than-normal human beings.
It is about getting the truth out where people can see it so they can form their own ideas of what the world is like.
It doesn’t matter what you call it.
I’ll just keep on doing whatever it is I do.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
