The Art of Journalism

Summary: Trying to understand my own writing is making my head hurt.

Word of the day: chips
In case you didn’t know, fish and chips are not served with potato chips (those are “crisps”) but a form of fries.

What I learned today: Everyone in America seems to think that Europeans hop on the train to Paris or Rome or wherever all the time. No sir, it’s totally expensive. Everyone in Europe flies everywhere. I was looking up taking a trip to Paris, and discovered that the train is 100 pounds more than flying. What?

Next time I go to London I will…try not to be working when I do it.

The Craft
I am really busy, swimming in a sea of OTC derivatives and not getting that last 15 minutes of sleep I apparently need to function.

Journalism seems fun and easy when you’re writing about topics you could write about before the interviews—some of my favorites: ballet, ferrets, the oppression of women.

However, one thing every journalist has to learn at some point is how to piece stuff together you don’t understand at all. Even when you are covering a beat (= area/topic), you are going to have moments that require a lot of time perusing Wikipedia for background. Even the swankiest music journalists around might fall into some psychedelic-folk-punk-swing band they’ve never heard of.

In more complex examples, the instrument could be harder to process (uh-oh, I'm starting to sound like an investment consultant!). If it is a complicated topic, such as OTC derivatives, you don't have to understand the definition of what you are writing about, but you need to understand why it matters. Do I really understand what an OTC derivative is? Of course not, but I could tell you everything anyone needs to know about them, written for people who already know what it is.

And that’s really why journalists exist. Not because we know what we are talking about—but because we went to school to know how to find out about what we’re talking about: by typing it into Google.