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Good Journalists are Not Nice People
by Jackie Barba
Last August at our journalism department’s orientation for incoming students, a certain unnamed faculty member spouted a cliché which I hated, and which would unfortunately prove true.
“Good journalists are not nice people,” he said (or something along those lines — I’m taking liberties because I wasn’t taking notes). Journalists are pushy, bossy, and aggressive, he said. You all look like nice people. In a few months you won’t recognize yourselves.
We were only about 20 minutes into journalism school at this point, and as if the idea of being a regular journalist wasn’t frightening enough, now we had to concern ourselves with becoming Rude Journalists. Because only Rude Journalists would survive the industry, while “nice” journalists would end up cowering in tears in some corner of the newsroom.
It took me nearly a full semester to find out exactly what punishment befalls nice, sweet journalists, who feign interest in the most disinteresting things; who say “but thank you for your time” when the source says ‘No;’ who hear ‘No’ and think, “well, that certainly sounds like a No.”
Cute works for Katie Couric, but not for most journalists.
What happens to nice journalists like this is they end up giving two-hour phone interviews to useless and borderline psychotic sources who refuse to hang up on the other end.
My first such source was an animal therapist at a psychiatric center on Long Island. All day long he introduces schizophrenics to bunnies and miniature horses and chickens and sheep. And I just needed one — just one — fluffy anecdote to include in a fluffy article on the subject. I thought it would be a quick chat, an easy write-up, and after we’d all agreed that Animals Are The Cutest we could call it a day.
But he wasn’t a quick chatter. And he didn’t really want to talk about his patients, or his animals. He wanted to talk about his training, his past, his former ambitions. What had gone awry in his life.
A Rude Journalist would have picked up on the sad desperation in his voice and put an end to the call, fast. But I didn’t want to be rude, so I sat on the phone with this man for nearly two hours, trying over and over again in my most polite voice to get him to say something mildly useful. Whenever I attempted to deflect him from his ramblings, he got back at me by reading aloud from the center’s brochure in a deliberate monotone. Then he’d clear his throat, and give a “now where was I?” sort of murmur, and we were off again.
At the time I felt subject to some cosmically precise punishment for trivializing this man’s career; that, perceiving of my superficial reporting and transparent motives, he must be teaching me a lesson. Looking back, I’m sure he was just a lonely old man with no one to talk to all day but schizophrenics and farm animals. And less polite journalists than myself.
But I realized afterward, with my phone-ear still aching and my head not faring much better, that I could have easily extracted myself from this messy and miserable situation by putting on a bit of the Rude Journalist Persona. Being rude has its advantages. It allows you to be abrupt, which keeps you efficient. It saves invaluable writing time by cutting short useless chatter. And it gives you full right to hang up on needy eccentrics.
I still find it hard to be rude or abrupt with strangers, and I think there are people who will always find rudeness and abruptness uncomfortable and sometimes impossible. I would advise incoming students to practice on their family and friends. Because efficiency is an indispensable tool; and because it’s a journalist’s prerogative to say No, too.
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