I am Creative and I am not a Journalist?

Facts and figures do not compel readers, stories do. The new media-users want more than the information rich. They need story-skimpy new media outlets!

The terms journalism and reporting are often used interchangeably. Maybe the two just can't be separated in practice, but the rise of new media demands a distinction.

As newspapers, magazines, publications and newsletters creep on to the Web, the demand for reporters, who can keystroke simple sentences and strings of numbers, swell.

I'd define reporting as nuts-and-bolts, no-nonsense information-gathering and packaging. 

Reporting wants just the facts. Journalism entails investigation, explanation and a point of view.

Journalists are story-tellers, fascinated with the human experience, alert to the drama of conflict and struggle, infinitely curious about the motives and meanings behind events. Reporters use nouns and verbs as blunt utility instruments. 

Journalists indulge in figures of speech; they use words as symbols, to evoke empathy, pity or anger. Most of what appears in Indian Express and TOI is journalism. Most of Economic Times is reporting. 

Journalism inherently requires that stories be told in-depth. Many newspapers have cut out long articles, even before the Internet. They've followed the example set by television news. They've been hit by the rising price of printing, and the renewed spotlight on cost-cutting. They're convinced readers are pressed for time, impatient with detail, and conditioned to ingest the news in pellets.

Of course, the same readers are not so pressed for time that they can't watch the T20 and reruns of very bad movies. People who choose not to read are not cut off from the news. The movies, radio, and later television have deepened the public's acquaintance with the wider world - at least with its memorable horrors and tragedies. 

The bigger bulk of broadcast is reporting, in the sense that I used it earlier, rather than journalism. It is epitomized by the two-minute wire service radio bulletin on the hour, already a fast disappearing format. "Russian armies marched into China today from five directions." "President Banerjee was shot and killed today in Red Fort." Just the facts. 

Information isn't knowledge, and facts don't add up to wisdom.

Are we entering an age of universal access to massive amounts of raw, unbundled information, anyone can take or leave as much as they want? 

In electronic databases, the public has (at its disposal) an incredible reference facility. But it's not going to make journalism an obsolete skill. 

You can put "War and Peace" on a Web site, but who's going to read it all the way through? When people read for fun, they want to sit back in a relaxed posture, not all keyed up at the keyboard. Computers lend themselves well to the display financial tables or sports results, but they are far less comfortable for communicating narrative. 

Readers savor both the content and style of a good story, and print lets them move back and forth instantaneously from what they are reading to what they have read and are about to read. 

Mere reporting is fine for the monitor. Story-telling is the job of journalism - and of newspapers. 

So if there are people out there wondering what to do with their creativity being journalists/reporters, for they are told it is completely useless in the industry; here’s your answer. Use it. It’s the next best thing.

-Parvati Natarajan