Journalists are human too
Wednesday, the 4th of September — roughly 5pm. The Starbucks located off a corner of a crowded mall in downtown San Antonio, Texas was compact with a few folks ducking in and out as the Allman Brothers Band’s Ramblin’ Man played through the speakers. I had sought a caffeine boost a few hours after my flight landed and the (what felt like) long hours spent waiting for my hotel room to be ready.
I was in San Antonio — my first foray to the Lone Star State — for the Excellence in Journalism conference, held by the Society of Professional Journalists, the Radio Television Digital News Association and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. It was the first EIJ that I was able to attend in the five years I had been an SPJ member thanks to a generous scholarship.
In the days that I was there, with sun and heat as the backdrop as I commuted to the conference location and other spots around downtown, I had felt something that I hadn’t felt in a long time — something that in this fast paced age that journalism has become accustomed to is taken for granted all too often — I felt human.
Journalism conferences are interesting things. The eager anticipation of networking, seeing friends and colleagues and advancing one’s prospects is easily mixed with being overwhelmed about an environment that is similar to a trading floor on the New York Stock Exchange.
In the case for early career journalists like me — with a box of business cards and a folder with resumes and other notes in the bag on one’s shoulder — this all is combined with the anxiety of making the right impression in the hopes of getting to a job in an unsteady industry, working through the career expo booths while the words “thanks but no” continue to be a constant refrain in inboxes across the land.
Yet, as the conference days progress and one gets into a routine, connection and camaraderie with friends and colleagues in the industry emerge.
As it does, the realization emerges that despite all of social media and virtual technologies that can allow the 21st century to embrace Canadian communication scholar Marshall McLuhan’s vision of a global village — there is something still paramount about human interaction and seeing with your own eyes that it isn’t just you trying to sort difficult things out.
Take the case of my colleagues in SPJ’s Freelance Community — the flagship community of SPJ’s network of broad based journalism communities. In the middle of a conference space in the conference hotel one afternoon, community chair Hilary Niles and her freelance counterparts from near and far gathered, brown bag lunches or equivalent in hand, and they chatted about life. There was no topic off limits in freelancing — as members talked and discussed their plights, other members were abound to offer ideas and lend an ear.
Journalists are masters of the hustle. They know that it has an equal number of good and bad parts, and they work through the hustle while already feeling bogged down — meeting deadlines and trying not to slip up — for fear it could cost them employment. Freelancers are no strangers to the hustle — to them, it can be one of the most rewarding this in the world — while simultaneously it can also be an isolating endeavor — an exponential increase to what can be a genuine pain in the ass.
Yet, the Freelance Community and its members have lessons for all of us in journalism — whether one is employed full time, working freelance or doing a hybrid while awaiting a permanent gig — the industry is stronger not when we’re isolated, but when we’re together, facilitating the access of ideas and working to better ourselves — for when we do that, not only are we better for it, but so are the people in journalism that matter — the audience.
We may be journalists, and we embrace the public service calling of our profession — but we’re humans too — and in this isolating, fast paced age that we find ourselves in, it’s something we should neither forget nor ever take for granted.
Editor’s note: I am a member of the Society’s Ethics and Awards Committees, and served briefly on the Freelance Community’s executive board. I also for a couple of years oversaw SPJ’s network of communities as Community Coordinator — which included the Freelance Community.
