Devil Builds Home In Details

A great writer should be a thinking observer; a great journalist should be a selfless writer. Reporting the facts is to write the known truths in a way that informs the reader without indoctrinating them. Writers by nature are literary artists. Painting words with the ink of emotion and staining our hearts in the process. But where does the fragility of the writer and stone cold heart of the journalist meld? I like to believe that answer lies within self-awareness.

Assume you’re the reporter on-scene during the discovery of a gruesome murder. A child, allegedly beaten to death by his mother and her boyfriend. The two have been arrested and accused of torturing the boy, beating him with a hammer, than burning his body. You’re a parent of a child which is roughly the same age as the victim. This is the situation many journalists found themselves in during the Ethan Stacy case in 2010.

So, how do you report the story without injecting a personal bias? By reporting the facts and letting the reader decode the information themselves. The responsibility of the journalist is to present the facts and tell the story as it’s known at the time.

From my view point as both a fragile writer and stone cold journalist I find the constant fight maddening. Journalism makes sense as an important element of documentation. But the writing journalist can be oxymoronically tortured to a degree. Perhaps this is why one has to be a bit off to take up journalism—or at least the reporting of it—for a living.

 

 You’re going to lose your mind over this week’s grammar mistake.

Obviously, the wrong “your” was used here. Ouch, you’re so close. This post contains one mistake which make me cringe: ha. I recognize, it’s often a challenge to convey emotions through casual text; this especially true for social media. In lieu of Emojis, what could this person have done to project his emotion correctly? Here’s how I would edit this post grammatically improved, while still using casual voice:

“Do you feel better? Everyone makes mistakes; however, you’re the only one who brings this stuff up.”