- Hi, everyone. Happy New Year, happy 2021.
(gentle music) Sitting here in Washington, DC, right outside of what is
increasingly becoming a war zone, because this week there is a, hopefully, peaceful transfer of power
from one leader to another. Anyway, let's talk about journalism. I sort of stumbled into journalism. At first I wanted to be like
a cinematographer, filmmaker. Then I wanted to be a
diplomat and I wanted to join the Foreign Service
for the United States. Then I learned that I didn't
wanna do either of those things and that I could actually
combine ingredients from both to do this thing called journalism, communicating kind of complex topics of the day to an audience. I didn't go to journalism school, I didn't formally study this, but I ended up becoming what
most would call a journalist. Over the years I've learned a few things about journalism that I wanna share with you. - [Narrator] I assign a reporter to get all the important facts
and to write the story. I also assign a news
photographer to take pictures. The recorder and photographer
will work together as a team. Now the reporter has all the facts. He's ready to write his story. He puts the most important facts
in the first few sentences. Then he adds the interesting details. - So let's make a list here.
(bright music) Number 1: "Objectivity is a myth." There's no such thing as objectivity. I often find myself in these conversations where people are just like, "If there was just
unbiased, objective news, all of our problems in the
media would just go away." That's a really attractive
idea, but the more I do this, the more I realize that
objectivity isn't a thing, it's a theory. It's not a real thing
you can ever achieve. Every article you read,
every video you watch, every photo you see was
produced by a human being who went out and gathered that information and then decided what
facts to put down on paper. They chose to frame the
issue a certain way, to leave out some stuff
and to include other stuff. There were choices there. And those choices were the product of a human and their biases. Even a photo journalist, someone who takes pictures for newspapers, presumably the least bias type
of journalism there can be, is still totally subject to bias. The way that photo is cropped and framed, and who they decided to take
a photo of, and at what time, and how they decided to expose the frame, all of those are choices. Objectivity is a myth. But what isn't a myth, and what's real? And I think what people
are sort of getting at when they talk about
objectivity, is fairness. Being fair to your topic, or your subject, or the other side of the argument that you're making in your article. My old boss Ezra Klein
(gentle music) used to talk about this
concept as generosity. We, as journalists go out and gather a bunch of information
and facts about a thing, and then we sort of land somewhere on what we think about that topic. And our journalism, our story, is gonna reflect that decision. But what you can do as a fair journalist is you could be generous
to the other side. You can present the best version of the other side's argument. That to me is what healthy journalism has, is generosity to the other side. But objectivity, it just doesn't exist. I experienced this in the
first season of "Borders" when I was in Japan doing
that North Korea bubble story. I clearly had a position in that story, but at the same time, I wanted
to give the best version, the most generous version, of
the North Korean viewpoint. And I tried to split that balance while also being clear and
assertive about the facts. That's a difficult balance,
but when it's done right, it makes for better journalism. Number 2: "A lot of journalists write for their peers and
not for their audience." This is another really
(gentle music) useful thing that I learned
from Ezra Working at "Vox." A lot of journalism is hard to understand, that's just a fact. Like even now when I read
the "Wall Street Journal" or the "Washington Post"
or the "New York Times," I have a hard time getting
around some of the language and some of the things that are happening, especially for topics
that I'm sort of new to. I've always felt this. And it's always sort of been
frustrating, 'cause I'm like, "Aren't you guys writing
so that I understand? Like, I'm an educated
consumer of this news and yet I'm having a
hard time understanding." Like, that's a problem. A lot of journalism is
written for insiders. People who are already kind
of familiar with the topic. As a journalist, when you're writing about
something that's kind of complex, you start to sort of get in your head. You're like, "Man, a lot of
people are gonna see this. And a lot of really smart
people are gonna see this. So if I use really simple language, what are my peers gonna think? What are my journalists
friends down the road at the "Washington Post"
or the "New York Times" gonna think about this article if I don't use all the fancy jargon?" If I'm explaining the
financial crisis in Venezuela, it's a lot more tempting
to write something like, "Hyperinflation has led to
the complete devaluation of the local currencies
spurring a collapse in wages," which shows my peers that
I'm actually really smart. I have a Master's degree in International Relations and Economics. But what about my audience who knows nothing about hyperinflation? They're left feeling left
out and no more informed about the financial crisis in Venezuela. Instead, what I should do
is write something like, quote, "Situation has
gotten so bad in Venezuela that the money is worth
a thousand times less than it was last year, making those who were once really rich now struggling to find their next meal." It's still accurate. It's still smart. And it's still an accurate assertion about what's happening in Venezuela. I'm just not using any of the jargon. If my peers judge me for that, so be it. At least my audience will understand. Number 3: "Journalism has a lot of very old customs or traditions." There are a lot of old practices
and habits in journalism that feel like gospel to a
lot of people in journalism. One of the big ones that I always run into is that in sort of traditional
conventional journalism we don't say the word "I."
(light music) The journalist is a fly on the wall, we're not there to insert ourselves, our personal character into the story, therefore we don't say the word, "I." And I sort of understand
the thinking behind that even if I don't practice it. The other convention or custom, mainly in like documentary
and video journalism, is that we're not here to make
things look too beautiful. Beautiful B-roll, evocative music, beautiful motion graphics, those are for like the brands
and the corporate people. Here in journalism we care about "The story".
(drums boom) And all the fancy stuff is just
fluff, not necessary at all. I disagree with both of those. I disagree with the aversion to using "I," and I disagree with the aversion to using beautiful imagery and B-roll and music. Luckily, when I came into journalism, I came into an organization
that was very eager to disrupt this old set
of customs in journalism. "Vox" really encouraged me to experiment. Thank goodness they did. I was able to start a
series that was all about showing beautiful visuals
of places around the world, and it had music and
it had motion graphics. And of course, it had a lot of
turning the camera on myself and talking to the camera. I was a character in the story, and I would go to these conferences, these journalism conferences, and I would always get
sort of interrogated by these legacy news people who were like, "Can you really consider this journalism?" And my response was always, "I don't know. Like, you can decide, I'm not here to chase
the label of journalism. I'm here to tell stories about people and to bring big audiences
to those stories." The reality is a lot of these customs are sort of arbitrary
and they were developed at a different time when
information was shared differently. Let me caveat just one big thing here by saying that a lot of these norms, and a lot of these customs
and ethics within journalism, are actually really useful. The idea of staying honest and fact-based, and accurate, and making
sure that your assertions actually have some evidence to them, I am all for that. I love that there is a
very strong tradition and burden of evidence
within journalism that says, "If you can't prove it, it's not real," especially because a lot of those customs, which I believe are the
really important customs of factual information, are
sort of going out the window. And if you need proof of that, just go five miles away
from me to the Capitol, like a week ago, and see how that was covered
by journalists on both sides. When it comes to the formats, the, "Oh, that guy turned
the camera on himself" or, "Did a bunch of drone shots and therefore it's not journalism." I'm here to tell stories that have facts, and data, and characters
and help inform people. If you decide to call
that journalism or not, I don't really care. It's how I do it. But I guess the lesson here is that if you're going into journalism, those are really serious intense customs that you will come in contact with. Which gets me to my next
lesson which is number 4: "Journalism school isn't
always the best way to get into journalism." Now, let me just pause for a second and make it clear that I am not saying don't go to journalism school. Most of the people who
have taught me what I know about the craft of journalism
went to journalism school and I am deeply grateful. Thank you, Joss Fong and others for teaching me how to do journalism when I frankly didn't
know what I was doing when I walked in the door,
the first day at "Vox". But, let me make it clear
(bright music) that going to journalism
school is not the only or even the best way
to get into journalism. Man, I've said journalism,
the word journalism, so many times in this video it's starting to get
to the point where like the word feels weird to say,
because I've said it so much. So anyway, my critique
of journalism school is the same critique
I have of film school, which is something I started and stopped after about a year and a half. The critique for both of these is that the institution spends so
much time focusing on theory, tradition, history, critique
of the old style of doing it, the old way of doing filmmaking, or the old way of doing journalism, that they don't give
the students much chance to actually experiment and play around with like, the new versions of
how this thing is being done. We spend so much time looking
back and talking to faculty who sort of had their heyday
in, like, the old days, that they don't spend a lot of time doing the type of journalism
that happens today, which is under very
different circumstances economically, politically, et cetera. So, my big critique is that there isn't enough, in the trenches, experience with journalism, and that you ended up getting a sort of warped version of what
you're gonna be doing, and a lot of fixed ideas that
are hard to, sort of shift, when you actually get
out into the real world. Now, there are a lot of journalism schools who are doing really great
work in this department and letting their students
see what it's really like. I go and speak to a lot of
these journalism schools, whether it's the University of Oregon, or Stanford, or Yale or whatever it is. When I speak to students at these schools I see an appetite from
faculty to give these students perspective on what
journalism looks like in 2021. What it looks like in this
new age of digital journalism, and what are the different versions of journalism that one can go into? The big strength of journalism school is that they teach you the
importance of reporting, I mean, going out and gathering facts, of fairness, of facts,
of accuracy, of evidence, the heart of journalism you
learn in journalism school. Absolutely. That is totally irrefutable. I believe in that, but I believe that you
get a lot of that fluff on top of the customs and, how you're supposed to do journalism, and what is and what isn't. And those fixed ideas,
if they root too deeply can hinder you once you
get out into the field. Go there, learn, like, go for it, but make sure you don't get too entrenched on what journalism is and isn't. The next lesson is that: "Journalism is economic
in its very nature." It has to be, it is a business. Just watched "Little Women"
(bright music) the new one with Hermione,
it was really good. I watched "Little Women"
a bunch growing up but I'd never really bought it. And then I watched this one
and it totally made sense. And I loved it. Anyway, there's this amazing
line in there where she says, - "So don't sit there
and tell me that marriage isn't an economic
proposition because it is." - Journalism is an economic proposition, meaning if you're starting
a journalism outlet in the United States, you
are doing so as a business. You need to keep your lights
on and your doors open by selling something,
whether it's subscriptions, or whether it's ad's or whether
it's some other new version of economic value that you can
create with your journalism. You have to do that. And with that comes a certain set of expectations and incentives
that aren't necessarily aligned with the incentives of
telling really good stories. And now of course, I've ranted about this in
a previous video called, "Why I hate the news." I'm not gonna go into the
depths of my thoughts on this. If you want to go watch
that video, you should. But, whenever I go to speak at a journalism conference in Europe, I always chat with them about
the economics of journalism in Switzerland or the
Netherlands or whatever. And in Europe they've
really realized that like, private media can get out of control and can lead to some really bad outcomes. And so, they really try to buffer the media machine from private interests, and they do so, and a pretty good job, there's still private media in Europe. But here in the United States, private media is the name of the game. And the effects of these
incentives on journalism are very apparent. We are incentivized to chase
volume, to chasing numbers, to chase like a little bit of what's gonna get people to click? It's hard to compete when
the information landscape incentivizes us to be in that environment. Money usually comes from
attention and advertising not necessarily subscribers who pay a monthly fee for your newspaper. And attention and traffic are not always conducive
to telling the best story or doing the best journalism, which is a real travesty. The best thing that took the most time, the biggest article that
has the most information, is not actually the most valued
among the attention economy. But, anyway, I'm not here to lament human psychology.
(muted cheers) I do offer two pieces of hope to this capitalistic incentive
of the media quandary. Number one is that there are still really great outlets that publish really in-depth media and that you just have to pay money to. And by doing so you
shield the need for them to have to just chase pure volume. One of my favorite outlets of all time and where I get most of my news and my ways of thinking about the world, is a British weekly magazine
called "The Economist." And I pay for it. I like to consume media
that I know was crafted by the incentives of serving
me, the paying customer, as opposed to serving a different master, which is an advertiser
who will keep them afloat. There's still a lot of amazing media that happens through advertiser
revenue, but just as a fact, most media had to pivot to that, but, more and more, those
incentives are pushing media into more sensationalized,
polarized places. Okay, my second
(bright music) piece of hope here is that when I joined "Vox", we were
just sort of taking off. We had less than 100,000
subscribers on YouTube. It was like the early days. And there was this hypothesis
among the whole organization, which was like a few dozen people, that if we could tell really good stories, and explain really
complicated things to people, that we would actually win the views game, like, people would actually come to us instead of the funny cat video, because they actually want to understand. People actually want to
engage with good information. And it turns out that that
hypothesis was totally correct. The most popular videos
I ever made at "Vox", one, a six minute explainer of
a complex Middle Eastern war, really complicated, but got
hundreds of millions of views. And another really popular video I made was a 10 minute video explaining the housing policy crisis
and tax law in Hong Kong. Like, some of those boring
but important information you could ever think of. But, because they were presented in a way that people could access, it actually made them really popular. And people said, "Yes,
I want to understand what's going on with the Syrian civil war, because everyone's talking about it and I don't understand it. I will sit through this six minute video." And that video by the way, took off, not on YouTube, but on Facebook. Like, the place where people's attention is apparently the lowest and
where people are just there to click on whatever's sensational. That's a problem, that's happening, but you can still get people
to watch really in-depth stuff if it's well told and well presented. So that, that's a hopeful
thing to my little lament about the economics of journalism. Man, I'm getting deep right now. I'm getting like deep into
my theories of journalism. Yeah. Yeah. This is good. This is good. Let's get onto the next lesson. Number 6: "Good writing
is rare and beautiful." What I've learned in journalism is that the difference between someone really connecting with a story and not connecting with a
story, is just a few words. Good writing, whether it's for a video or a text-based article, it
can bring you into a story. It can illuminate a topic,
it can humanize a character. It's really important. I wasn't very good at writing
when I started at "Vox". And over the years I had some
really good story editors who would look at my writing and help me reshape it and simplify it, and make it more concise
and make it clearer. I am grateful for the people
who taught me how to write, because, a lot of the videos
you see on this channel, yeah, there is beautiful maps,
and there's fancy footage, and there's lots of
drone shots and whatever. But at the end of the
day, behind all of that, the reason why you're interested
in watching those videos is because I put a major
priority on writing. I spent so much time choosing my words so that every story I tell
(bright music) sinks in on the other
side when you're listening and that's because good journalism is good writing at the end of the day. And it's incredibly important. If you want to get better at
writing, I have a book for you. I'm gonna put the link in the description. If I forget to do that,
call me out in the comments because I don't wanna forget because I wanna tell you about this book. I mean, I could just say it right now and then you can go find it. But oh, but if I put it in
this link in the description I could make it an affiliate link, and then I could get money
every time you click it. Man, the incentives of
the 21st century economy are just playing on my mind right now. Oh gosh. Okay. The last lesson here,
"Good journalism is important." Now hear me out on this.
(bright electronic music) This might sound trite, but, I've learned over the years
that journalism is hard. To go out and gather information that doesn't exist in the world and to communicate it to the
rest of the world is hard. Our country, these past few months, has shown me just how important and how sort of delicate
good journalism can be. Facts don't matter for a
lot of people these days. And before you know it, you can have a person in power creating fake stories about an election, and you can have a news outlet that claims to be doing journalism, jump on board with that narrative and make up facts to support it. That's scary! Good journalism, the stuff
where people are going out and actually scrutinizing evidence and presenting robust
arguments to an audience that is scrupulous back towards them, and there's a discussion, a discourse, that's rare and special. Here in the United States we
call it the "Fourth Estate", this institution of free press that keeps our leaders honest, keeps our corporations honest, keeps our society together and honest. There will always be
people and institutions whose sole purpose is to gain. Journalism offers a
spotlight or a watchdog, on those actors on those institutions. And because of that, it's
really, really important. I am very, very grateful
for those journalists, especially right now,
this time in history, where covering the facts
is so freaking important for keeping our society
peaceful and together, and honest and working. I just, I'm grateful for the good journalism that's happening, the people out there hustling. And I lament the hostility that has been shown towards those people and I hope we can move on and
get back to facts and truth. Thanks for watching. This video is sponsored by Squarespace which is an all-in-one platform where you can create any sort
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for sponsoring this video. Thank you all for watching. Thank you, Patreons. Like always, like I've
now had a Patreon for like maybe six months or maybe more. And I'm just, I sort of thought like, "Man, the Patreons are gonna
be there for a few minutes, and then like after month or two, they're all just gonna flee." But they haven't. And I'm so grateful because
it helps support my work. I have some very zesty videos coming out in the next couple of weeks. Get ready for those. Just telling you, like, "How the US Stole the
Middle East, Part Two" I know you have all been asking for it. It's coming. (clicks fingers)
All right. See you all in the next one. Have a good day. Happy new year. Bye. - [Newsreel Announcer] This
is the plan for page 10. Then he writes a headline,
a title for the story. Then the printed story is checked
against the original story to make certain that
there are no mistakes. Warning light. The presses are starting to roll. Newspapers are sold on the streets, newspapers are delivered to homes, and they are read everywhere. I like my job, helping to bring
the news to our community.
1) "Objectivity is a myth" - While I can't stand that phrase, I do appreciate his reasoning and substitute that it's about being generous to the other side of the story. My annoyance with the phrase stems that the ones who parrot it the most tend to the ones who do so to defend their half-ass journalism.
2) "A lot of journalists write for their peers and not their audience" - This is more of an editing issue. My editors constantly remind me if I use too much jargon and to explain anything that may go over the reader's head. We even go so far as to have other editors who don't know about the subject matter I'm writing about and ask if they can understand it.
3) "Journalism has a lot of very old customs/tradition" - Now this is the fucking truth. Radio news is where this is really evident. However, the examples he uses are just...lame? One is not to use "I" in a story and the other is to ignore the beautiful stuff when filming. The "I" is used primarily for news reporting but there features and other types of articles that allow it. And for not wanting to record the "beautiful scenery," this comes off as him not getting the critiques of his work. He said he would go to conferences and "legacy media" would ask if they thought what he did was journalism because he puts himself in front of the camera and does these beautiful video shoots. If you go to the scene of a story where something visual spectacle is going to happen, and you come back with just basic footage, your producer is going to be pissed.
4) "Journalism school isn't always the best way to go" - Sigh, dude needs to be around people who went to other Jschols than Columbia. Especially since he says the schools teach a bunch of theory and don't have students go into the trenches.
5) "Journalism is economic in its very nature" - Yup.
6) "Good writing is rare and beautiful" - Yup again.
7) "Good journalism is important" - Another yup.
Killer video; thanks for producing it.
Indeed, Vox's animated graphics are stellar. They certainly belong in video news reporting.
I like your framing of "generosity" vs. "objectivity".
For a variety of reasons, I think a lot of people are questioning whether they should study journalism or even go to college in the first place. I am currently producing a video about how to work in TV news w/o going to college...and I will post here on Reddit and on my channel when done.