I’m not a journalist
Posted: November 8, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized 1 Comment…and I can’t and don’t want to approximate one, either. I think that’s pretty obvious, and might seem like a non sequitur, but you’ll see why it’s not in a second.
One odd thing is that, in the process of emailing a couple of people to suggest that we record some material for the podcast at the Conj, I encountered a few jokes (expressed most definitely tongue-in-cheek) around the prospect that I’d be trying to run a hardcore interview. I can picture it now, me sweating a Clojure library author with curveball questions and shooting for that perfect ‘gotcha’ moment where they mispronounce “Leiningen“. (Like I do sometimes. Not on purpose, I promise.) Yikes.
While people were joking, and I presume they don’t actually think that would happen (insofar as everyone I’ve approached has assented to being on the ‘cast), my mother always told me that there’s a kernel of truth in every jest. Further, I can appreciate that being recorded for posterity can be anxiety-inducing, and I’ve now heard at least one story of someone being unpleasantly grilled by an aggressive podcast host.
So, as much as possible, I’d like to reassure anyone being recorded at the Conj, and anyone that might be on the podcast in the future that I am sooooo not looking to create or experience any stress of any kind. I’m not interested in being a journalist (my biases and vested interests are too flaming obvious, anyway), and I’m certainly not interested in being a ‘gotcha’ journalist. I’m just someone that really, really likes Clojure, likes the people I know that use Clojure, and would like to know more people that use Clojure. I’m not even super-interested in doing interviews per se; having a conversation with someone that I might have if the podcast didn’t exist at all is my main goal for when “guests” are on. I’d rather just can the whole project than let things ever get “weird”, either for me or other hosts or “guests”.
If this has seemed like a bizarre digression…you’re right. But, hopefully the above clarifies what I’m up to and what my intentions are.
But journalism isn’t about being objective! So bias…
Verifying sources and doing some research, check and check. Most sensible people will do that anyway, right? The best pieces of journalism, imho, are when the journalist has an opinion… and conveys it without saying blah blah blah. Making interviewees uncomfortable is not often nice: you don’t want to coerce people into telling you stuff, you just want them to speak. Or not. Even silence can be an answer, and a journalist’s or interviewer’s job is to gather everything and present it to the audience, whether it be by closely steering the discussion or just having a casual chat about stuff.
Library authors love to talk about their libraries… let them. Let us.