Being a journalist, you write what you see. If we can't do that, what use are we? I turned years of training on myself.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think of us as journalists; the medium we work in is blogging.
As much as I'm not a journalist, I use journalism. And when you photograph a relationship, it's quite wonderful to let something unfold in front of you.
I think journalism is useful training for a writer in the way it takes the preciousness out of the pragmatic side of the craft.
A journalist enjoys a privileged position. In exchange for not being able to participate in the rough-and-tumble issues of a community, we are given license to observe it all, based on the understanding that we'll tell everyone what happens fairly and squarely. That's harder than it sounds.
In essence, I see the value of journalism as resting in a twofold mission: informing the public of accurate and vital information, and its unique ability to provide a truly adversarial check on those in power.
The journalistic endeavor - at least theoretically - is grounded in objectivity. The goal is to get you to understand what happened, when and to whom.
The training of a journalist, of working with words for thousands of hours, is extraordinarily useful for a fiction writer.
I think as journalists, we have to keep our distance from power.
Journalism is a flawed profession, but it has a self-correcting mechanism. The rule of journalism is: talk to everybody.
I'm a journalist, I run to the fire, that's what we do.