Another one of those that I pronunciamento the secret that will not fix my e Matamoros-reputation of the press. ... But perhaps on reflection twice, I realized that throughout my tweets and blog posts, I was digging hard, and for months the same furrow for planting the seed of this idea that Rousseau turned loop in my head :
" Go beyond standard of journalism, to find the raw power of words found in the wild to describe the brutality of the real" .
I can already hear the sneer of industry professionals: another failed writer who believes they have been around the business! And the mockery of hungry young journalists: even an aristocrat of the old press that pretends to want to shake the coconut without giving up its pension ... Do not say we lready time of Honore de Balzac that journalism is a profession of dilettantes and parasites carried by those who know nothing else to do? Maybe. I accept the omen. One thing is sure, journalism as I learned, as I have known and practiced in the 90s, is well and truly dead and buried .
finished craftsmanship of the pen and time closures enthusiastic finish the given time in the time of the investigation and writing, natural distrust towards authorities and notify them exit the sense of teamwork and pride in the map of the press ... place for convicts and Web companies to produce standardized information "disclaims all media" as said another. Other than me, before me, beginning with the intransigent Narvic , made the same observation as bitter our major newspapers were downsizing with a vengeance, turned into companies to produce standardized information, became the "Marks" soulless and stories literally and figuratively ... not foresee a second the end of their paper world.
Rather than invest millions in printing and new formulas as many desperate battles delay, these icons of the press would have done better hexagonal go to meet their reader 2.0, inventing new forms of online journalism, to develop the young journalists Web instead of turning them into the OS info, open to the tremendous richness of the blogosphere ... So learn to surf the large digital tsunami so as not to wreck. But that's another story I already told here.
And it is better to look ahead, go ahead. Old newspapers of the era Gutenberg who have not been able to adapt are probably doomed to extinction, as Newsosaures . But journalism, he is not dead. ink and paper or digital stream on all screens, q u'importe support. The need for information, reading and storytelling to bring the real, keep and transmit the memory, building history, is a critical need since man is man. Journalism is not dead. It is just sick , before torpor and indolence, won by resignation to the company image. Journalism is not death he just needs a shock ... to endanger, a little back to this revelation of the wild, the denunciation of the verve and the word that we no longer margins in the art. In snipers of online journalism ( Mediapart , Rue89, Free Electron ...), among explorers of new frontiers of digital information ( Owni ), some magazines ( " XXI "). And on some blogs of journalists, enclosed or not. These cons-interzone of journalistic culture in which we invent and reinvent the way to inform, tell, to testify for and against the denial environment.
"This journal will be like an ambush in the jungle of information" , proclaimed the manifesto proto-Mao "Liberation" at the birth of the newspaper in 1973. Any program that I make my own (of Maoism in less time). When my day is complete official reporter, I left my costume reasonable and I become a little wild on this blog. I do not spit in the soup which is pretty good in my journal, I'm rather proud of my team, happy to drop the copy and leave my pages every day. But like many, I a need for Elsewhere, another thing in practice and journalistic writing.
Conversely, with a little practice, standard journalism is not rocket science . To choose a topic, there is the thread of the AFP and the constant demands of press who understand that an article called worth less than a page of advertising. To get a scoop as we get a bone, it are the essential sources "authorized" and other "story teller". Two, three phone calls to check and go. Write an article to be read as they say in CFJ is not complicated in itself : grip commonplace, it meets five or six "W" (Who, What, Where, When, How and why?), we construct the paper inverted pyramid (the largest retail) as we have learned in school, drop and hop cliche it folded! On TV, on radio, where it draws its subjects in the newspapers is the same, always the same launches, the absence of risk and originality.
So I want to say to young (and old) journalists who want to try something else, all those who still have the strength and desire: if you have a little energy in the evenings, nights and weekends, and especially if you do not expect to live, venture into the margins of the Web and the blogosphere to write as you feel , take the ball from the news as it comes and type! Do not hate the media , Be The Media ! Listen more storytellers, quit your jobs stuck, get out into the street, go to meet people, facts, reality, back to being witnesses, you trust your eyes, your ears, your Judgement ...
Then write not only to be read but also to please your reader and make you happy: play, dance with words like an Indian shaman like a Hunter S. Thompson, or be as specific and a professional journalist of the New York Times ... Whatever the style of the bottle as long as you pass the intoxication of the moment. M ais always stay faithful to the facts and witness the real . This is the essence of art. Be hyper-realistic or impressionistic, but call a spade a spade, a cat a cat, a poor a poor, injustice injustice, a crook a crook. In short, be wild, adventurous, adventurous, take risks and do not take the reader for a fool, he will thank you. And knows, maybe you'll hear your small dissenting voice in the ambient hum. and participate in your own way to the revolution of the info tomorrow. Sometimes a good paper turns into pavement launched in the old duck pond.
Jean-Christophe Féraud
