Pat Quigley and I worked together at The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1984. Pat was a stringer who covered township governments and school boards for the South Jersey staff that I supervised. Today she is a public relations professional, working in education.
After I wrote a column a few weeks back about my three years in public relations for Independence Blue Cross, Pat sent me an e-mail.
“As a high school student, I wanted to enter journalism in large part because I thought it was a noble field. Often it is. But what I’ve learned over the years is it’s a mistake to think it is more so than another field, including PR. I’ve met journalists I wouldn’t trust at all and PR people I would trust with my life, and vice versa.
“Each individual, I think, has his or her standards regardless of career choice.”
Two days after I received Pat’s e-mail, I sat in a ballroom at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where the American Society of Newspaper Editors held a conference on the growing crisis facing American journalists and their ability to protect their sources.
The discussions focused on how the press can, in the face of increasingly aggressive prosecutors and a hostile administration in the White House, continue to pursue what arguably is the most important — and meaningful — work that journalists do.
About halfway through the first day of discussions in Washington, two reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, rose from their chairs along one side of the meeting room.
The audience applauded them, enthusiastically.
I found myself thinking about Pat Quigley.
And PR.
And how we all search for meaningful work.
And the many roads we take to get there.
*****
Williams and Fainaru-Wada have been sentenced to spend 18 months in jail. They are among a growing number of American journalists who have been incarcerated, or who face that prospect, because they refuse to tell the government who gave them grand jury testimony.
These two reporters point proudly, and unrepentantly, to the impact of their work on the story that has become known as the BALCO case. And well they should. Their stories focused national attention on steroid use in American sports and led to sweeping changes in the way Major League Baseball polices the use of steroids.
Even President Bush told them, “You’ve done a service.”
Yet, for all their efforts and awards and congratulations from the president, they face jail. In fact, they received longer sentences than those who committed crimes like illegal distribution of steroids, money laundering and perjury.
What’s going on here? Why would we jail two reporters who brought to our attention important information, thus accelerating a national discussion that quite possibly will save lives — not only of professional athletes but also of young people who emulate them?
And why then, given our increasing determination to jail the messengers, could journalists be expected to continue aggressively pursuing important stories and face the risk of prosecution?
Indeed, why would reporters and their companies risk — as the attorney general of the United States has suggested they could — being charged with espionage?
I think I know the answer.
It’s because to them, the work matters too much not to take the risk.
They find meaning in their work.
*****
In that, Williams and Fainaru-Wada are like many of us — including some of the people who posted comments to my column about PR, sharing how they’ve found satisfaction and meaning in a career in public relations.
Erin Scullion: “Fifteen years later, I still do what I did as a journalist, hunt down information, make it relevant and readable for the target audience, research, interview, check my facts, analyze trends, be fair and balanced, and so on and so on — all for the agriculture industry. It’s an industry I’m passionate about and am honored to work in.”
Jon Harmon: “PR can be a Force for Good within a company and in working with the news media.”
Barbara Clements: “I guess most of us want to change the world and do good, and I just decided with all the cutbacks at my former paper, doing good and saving the world wasn’t in the cards anymore. … I just had to save the world from another vantage point[.]”
Now some of you might point out, correctly, that the work of the BALCO reporters, whether you consider their methods heroic or illegal, carried a higher degree of personal risk than I ever faced in PR as I told my health insurance company’s story to the media. But does meaning necessarily derive from a job’s risk, or for that matter, from its pay or prestige?
Or does it most often derive from the job’s potential to contribute something of substance to the people we serve and the communities in which we live?
We find meaning in work that can make a difference.
*****
Can we help one another find meaning in our work?
Dad was a draftsman. For 44 years, he sat at a drafting table with his grid sheets and his pencils and his patience and he created precise drawings from the designs of engineers. He never spoke to me in detail about his work; he said he couldn’t because it involved defense contracting. But he was proud of what he did and how he did it — the fact it contributed to something important. And when he retired, his co-workers pulled me aside and said he was the best man they ever worked with.
Not the best draftsman.
The best man.
Without ever being given an office or a title, Dad had helped his pals in drafting discover the meaning of their work. No, they didn’t create the designs, and their pay grade reflected that fact. But Dad and his colleagues knew that without their accurate drawings (He said they used to correct the engineers’ errors.), the workers in the shop could not build the equipment.
In essence, they found meaning because they understood the connection between their work and the ultimate success of the enterprise.
I’m thinking about the e-mails I received from journalists who are worried about their futures, and it strikes me how many are struggling to see that connection in their newsrooms.
I want to tell them about a day in 1984 when I was reminded of that connection. (A day when the voice of my high school drama coach filled my head: “There are no small parts, Butch, just small actors.”) The Inquirer had been working on a story about the husband of vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, and the story was to be published the next day.
Lots of my colleagues were involved in the story, and throughout the day, I watched from my desk as they walked and hustled, one or two or three at a time, into and out of the office of the executive editor, Gene Roberts. The office buzzed with anticipation.
But I wasn’t involved.
No, while my colleagues were finishing a story that would receive national attention, I was completing a list of football coaches we planned to invite to a reception introducing our expanded high school sports coverage in South Jersey.
It was a great reception, and my staff produced a great new section. No, it didn’t get national attention. But surely, it was important — the latest effort by the Inquirer to improve its coverage of South Jersey.
It was, on that day, my connection to the important work of my newsroom.
*****
The litany of challenges facing newspapers, broadcast TV, and yes, the Internet, too, is familiar to us all. And every day, the urgency to respond to those challenges intensifies.
It’s in all of that urgency that I worry we’ll leave meaning behind.
We must learn to shoot video, learn to record audio, learn to blog, learn to podcast, learn to chat online, learn to file multiple times for the Web and then file for the paper and our newscasts, learn to point our stories forward because so much of our audience “already knows,” learn to post content produced by our users, learn to publish news reported by the public.
Are we clear about why?
Has our newsroom taken the time to discuss the work that all of these new skills will help us produce? Is it about doing better journalism? More revenue? Shareholder value? Reader service?
What’s the “why”?
We don’t have to like the answer. We don’t have to embrace it. But if I were working in your newsroom, I would need to know what the answer is — so I can decide what difference my work has the potential to make. Whether, for me, it has any meaning.
If your newsroom hasn’t talked about “why?” yet, please — for the sake of the readers and viewers who depend on us for meaning — let’s talk about it.
Let’s talk about the stories and images and projects we’re putting in the paper, on the air and on our Web sites, and ask what difference they’re making to our communities.
Let’s talk about whether the new tools and skills that many of us are being asked to learn on the fly are exciting us or intimidating us; giving us new reasons to look forward to work or giving us fresh reasons to seek other employment.
Let’s talk about how each of us is being affected by the uncertainty facing so many media companies — even if it’s not facing mine right now. While no one can guarantee that our jobs are forever, we need to talk honestly about our companies’ outlooks — and how the strategies for addressing those outlooks affects the work we do.
And finally, acknowledging that most of us will never report on steroid scandals or matters of national security, let’s help one another remember the times when our journalism made a difference. When a story we wrote or aired, a photograph we made, or the video we shot helped someone, changed something, inspired someone to take action.
If, after talking about all of this, any of us decides to take a different road on our search for meaning, so be it.
Honorable work awaits.
But before we go, let’s fight hard to make sure the road to meaning doesn’t stop leading to our newsroom’s door.
