Jun 7, 2017
A brand new never ending cycle
Thanks to grad school, I learned how to listen in a different way as a journalist. And I don’t see a reason for not applying it as a process from now on, in every project.
I came from my country pursuing a single opportunity: to get rid of some old habits that built me as a traditional journalist. I wanted to get rid of the preconceived way to approach people, to set the layout of an investigation, to learn and incorporate a new way for me to listen and try to avoid the typical things that, I think, have made the product of my work so unfulfilling these last years.
“I want an axe to break the ice,” sings David Bowie in the song “Ashes to ashes.” Many times I recall that verse when thinking about what I want to do not to journalism as a whole but to the way I approach it. But it looks so tough to set an innovation path, to learn how to really do this in some other way, to break the routine with solid evidence that you can change the process for the better.
The Community Engagement course I had been part of this first semester at CUNY´s MA in Social Journalism allowed me to lay a foundation in terms of the community that I intend to serve, but also gave me things that I would like to incorporate as a journalist overall.
I think what struck me the most of all the course was the chance that ethnographic observation and mostly qualitative research as a whole can provide me. Knowing that these tools for approaching a certain context were available for so long made me wonder how in the world I thought that I had the correct way to approach a certain community or issue. To me, it went that deep. I was never good at the traditional way to do sourcing, that kind of access that political journalists like to brag about. I don´t think it´s bad or anything, it´s just that I´m not good at it. For many years, I thought that this was precisely one of the things that made me a mediocre journalist. But it turns out that, if you apply a different kind of skillset, there are other ways to repurpose journalism as a service, and something more in touch which things that people might need besides those traditional political scoops.
Other key insight from the course also had to do with how to frame listening as a process before anything. From now, the first thing I should plan before pursuing a community or a certain issue inside it that I want to report about should be a listening plan that might involve a good tool for asking questions, gathering readers and getting in touch with community leaders.
Given the nature of the course, I had to take different steps to listen to my community. I had to find a way to identify key players and try to engage them. I had to explain them what “listening” was and why I wasn’t doing any reporting prior to that. I had to resist the push to pursue reporting ideas and to prioritize the listening process, which for a traditional journalist, is tough. Then I had to try different ways to gather knowledge on Social Media, by using Hearken on Facebook, or asking straight questions through platforms. And best of all, I learned ways to process what I’ve heard.
I also have faced some hurdles that allowed me to know what to do when I start the process again. I didn´t know how to apply qualitative research so I went to look for a researcher with that kind of expertise who works in the field and into the subject that I want to focus this year. I´m trying to serve people who cannot afford cooling in summer or heating in winter in NYC. This is the kind of things that people are ashamed of and don´t want to discuss with someone with a recorder and a pen, no matter how much you try to explain them that you are there to listen and not do traditional reporting. I found that the gatekeepers were cautious about me, which is totally understandable. Trust has to be earned, and that is what I´ve tried to do this semester. I still face some resistance from the community organizers to allow me to reach the very affected people, so I´m trying to diversify my chances of reaching them by trying to contact some other organizations.
And please, don´t get me wrong: I really did wanted to face this obstacles, because while I think that if you are already a member of your community you will have it easier to make contacts and get information or interviews, this profession will not allow me to always focus or do work with communities that I´m a part of or in which I have relatives or friends. To me, the chance of having a year facing exactly these kinds of problems, how to overcome them and how to set a relationship with a community from scratch was exactly what I was searching. And I hope I keep improving throughout the year. Because these are exactly the kind of things that keeps journalists in their comfort zone. To learn to listen means that I also have to battle against myself, that the ice that I want to break with Bowie´s axe is basically me, my insecurities, my lack of skill to establish other kinds of relationships with people.
Last but not least, what I learned through this semester allowed me to confirm what I thought: that focusing on listening gives room to new ideas that come from what it has to be a totally different kind of interaction with a subject; that if you don’t go straight to what you heard because you are in a hurry, better input awaits you, and that if I’m going to try to actually serve that community, my listening process will not end: it will be more like a constant cycle of listening and then acting based on what I got.
