sunt dintre cei care cred ca presa moare pentru ca o omorim noi cei care “prestam” in interiorul ei.

si nu dati vina pe managerii vostri, nu doar ei sunt “criminalii”; cu fiecare text scris prost, in fustereala, fara pasiune, fara documentare, cu mai multa opinie personala decit research si surse, ii mai taiem putin oxigenul presei muribunde.

e un cerc vicios, nu scrieti bine pentru ca nu va platesc patronii, dar patronii nu au bani sa va plateasca pentru ca nu pot sa vinda marfa voastra: pentru ca, oricit ar fi de greu de acceptat, e proasta.

daca fiecare si-ar face treaba la maximum din ce poate da el, in fiecare moment al actiunilor sale de jurnalist, roata ar incepe sa se invirta.

***

Thomas Nagorski, foreign managing director la ABC News, a renuntat recent la stiri si, inainte de a parasi redactia pentru care a muncit multi ani, a scris un text emotionant care vorbeste despre flacara care arde intr-un jurnalist adevarat.

citeste textul si daca nu simti asta, nu da vina pe banii pe care-i primesti, nici pe constringerile pe care ti le pun sefii, gindeste-te ca poate nu esti facut sa fii jurnalist.

A couple of weeks ago my phone rang—12:25 a.m. The assignment editor, Molly Hunter, was on the line. “This Benghazi thing may be a lot worse than we’d thought,” she said. “We’re wondering about moving a team there.”

We spoke long enough to get the mind whirring: What were the options? How grave the danger—to the Americans there, and to reporters who might head that way? What about Libyan visas?

A few hours later, just before five in the morning, Molly called again. “So sorry, Tom. But thought you needed to know. The ambassador’s been killed. We’re preparing a special report.”

I took a shower, whispered goodbye to my wife, and headed for West 66th Street, my desk in the ABC News newsroom. It was a big story, to be sure, another globe-turning event. And these things have an effect on reporters and editors, on all of us who carry the news gene. Others might hear the news and wonder, ask questions, perhaps worry about the consequences. For us it is different: We carry the synaptic wiring that produces the adrenalin, that zero-to-sixty firing of questions and plans when a bulletin hits.

And for me, there was a wrinkle: This story—and all these middle-of-the-night calls—would in all likelihood be my last.

I was leaving journalism after 28 years. It seems strange even to write that sentence, but there it is. Leaving the news. I am headed for the Asia Society, just across town but a world away. Whatever challenges await, one thing is clear: I shouldn’t worry much more about news—at least not in the manic, adrenalin-filled way I have worried about the news for all these years. Put differently, those synapses ought to stop firing.

(…)

I remember a quiet Saturday in New York, friends over for dinner, and the phone ringing. Yitzhak Rabin had been shot at a rally in Tel Aviv. “So sorry, Anne…” A few hours later we were on the El Al flight to Tel Aviv, jammed with mourning Jews and anxious journalists. Some 15 years later, a 1:00 am call: A normally placid night desk editor frantic on the line: It’s a huge quake, Tom… The news nerves went haywire. In an hour we were in the office, many of us, and we would just about live there, for some time, as the waves struck and the nuclear plants burned on the Japanese coastline.

Times have changed, of course, and the news and the ways we cover it are dramatically different, but the adrenalin remains.

I can remember so well the pang of angst I used to feel each morning with the thud of the newspaper hitting the front door, worried always that I might have missed something that had turned up on The New York Times front page. “Where are we with this?” Peter Jennings would ask, and woe unto me if I didn’t have either an account of what we were doing, or a convincing case that the story wasn’t worth our pursuit.

Today very little in the Times or other morning delivery surprises, not because it isn’t compelling or important, but because we have likely read or heard about most of the stories by the time the physical paper hits the stoop. Now it’s that middle-of-the-night call or the beep of the Blackberry.

textul integral poate fi citit aici.

Multumesc frumos Peter pentru ca mi-ai aratat aceasta scrisoare minunata.