Nathan Lyle Kloostra Bierma

NATHAN L.K. BIERMA
Writer•••••Grand Rapids, Michigan

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Journalists write about 2 percent of what's interesting.

This quote from stellar journalist James Fallows is my credo and my inspiration to try to do creative work in the field of journalism. The highest ideal of journalism is not to "inform the public" (an ambiguous and potentially self-righteous slogan), but to foster and satisfy a broad curiosity about the world. The finest journalism combines the powers of observation, analysis, and good writing to give vibrancy and meaning to our lives.

The function of the media is to put our lives in context. But the media are a filter of reality and thus distort it. They overemphasize and make melodrama of violence and political power in the world at the expense of the more meaningful personal drama and cultural dynamics that shape people's lives.

The media also operate with coldly scientific traditions and assumptions of what is news, along the lines of "objective reporting" (which is impossible) and "just the facts" (which is arrogantly ontological and inhumanely detached; the media do not, as one professor of mine put it, "dispassionately observe from afar").

As Fallows writes in his incisive critique Breaking the News:

From the nearly infinite array of events, dramas, tragedies, and successes occurring in the world each day, newspaper editors and broadcast producers must define a tiny sample as 'the news.' The conventions of choosing 'the news' are so familiar, and so much of the process happens by learned and ingrained habits, that it is easy for journalists to forget that the result reflects decisions, rather than some kind of neutral scientific truth.

While not abandoning their commitment to research and fairness, journalists must seek dynamic and intelligent ways to write about the world. There is a place for personal analysis written with voice, so long as it is wise, nuanced, and humbly provocative. Journalists should write with a sense of curiosity, intelligence, irony, wit, grace, and empathy.

• My vision statement
• More on media and curiosity at my weblog

Bad Journalism
The six biggest problems with the media (so-called "liberal bias" is number 7):

1) poorly conceived and crafted stories that are neither interesting nor intelligent.
2) coverage of violence devoid of context that invites nothing but gawking.
3) coverage of politics devoid of policy that reduces political activity to manipulative strategy (more).
4) bias toward instant news. In a 24-hour news cycle, news has to be "breaking" to be covered, which increases the amount of useless fright and amusement.
5) reinforcement of a consumer culture in business and leisure coverage.
6) over-abundance of celebrity and entertainment stories.

Good Journalism
• My Curiosity index
• My Leads collection

Good Essays about Journalism:
• James Fallows: How the media can find their way back
• James Fallows on post-9/11 "public journalism"
• Anna Quindlen: "The Eye of the Reporter, the Heart of the Novelist"
• Columbia Journalism Review on magazine writing
• Newsweek's Jonathan Alter: Just the Facts?
• Chicago Sun-Times on the worldview of Ira Glass
• The New York Observer on how journalists should learn their trade

DO'S
The two most important ways to become a better journalist or writer of any kind, in my view, are very simple.

1) Read. Read with a promiscuous curiosity. Read a little something about everything. Read good magazines about subjects that don't normally interest you. Read a business magazine, then a skiing magazine, then a science magazine, then an art magazine. Read historical fiction and historical non-fiction, read classic novels and books on cultural change in the 20th Century. Read the New York Times and Atlantic Monthly regularly. Read actively, with an eye on how writers use words and phrases, what decisions they had to make to produce what's in front of you, and how that might inform the decisions you make as a writer yourself. Read to experience people, places, and ideas, in order to develop a deeper appetite and capacity to write about people, places, and ideas.

2) Write. Write with a similar promiscuity. Approach writing not as a science, as news reporters do, nor as an art, as a poet does, but as a craft--an intricate process requiring both mechanical engineering and creative design. Try writing essays, short stories, haikus, birthday cards, letters, and songs--to practice using words and forming phrases, to practice describing places and people, trying to see tiny and huge at the same time--minute details, big ideas, and, sometimes, the fusion of the two. Keeping a weblog is a great way to write regularly and keep track of both your jotted thoughts and clipped stories.
• More: On Writing

and DON'T's
Don't (always) fall into the 2 percent trap Fallows describes above. Don't limit your vision to scandals, political strategy, wars, natural disasters, violent death, and celebrities--which currently compose 90 percent of our news. These can be important, but the world is a much bigger, more complex, and more interesting place.

The J-School Debate
Columbia president Lee Bollinger recently ignited a very useful debate on how journalism schools can produce more broad-minded, academically sound graduates, not just technically trained reporters. My alma mater, Calvin College, didn't have a journalism major, but in addition to my internships, I took courses in media theory, television criticism, persuasion and propaganda, video and audio editing, honors composition, church history, American industrial history, European politics, and social pscyhology. It was the best possible training to be a writer. Good reads on the J-school debate here, here, and here.