There are many times when I’m not sure what I’m doing in the Radio program. It seems vastly removed from my original discipline of Physics. I mean, Physics is remarkably simple compared to Radio. My classmates scoff when I say that, but it’s true. In a physics lab, you come up with your hypothesis, and then set out to disprove it (in proper scientific method fashion). At the end, you can have only one of two outcomes: your hypothesis is true, or your hypothesis is false. Not so in radio. Once you start getting out to the world, there are a hundred different people listening, leading to hundreds of different outcomes.

I had just one goal when I went in to the program: be a DJ. But now that I’m in there, I find that there a lot of other options I can go with. If being a DJ doesn’t cut it, I can always be a writer; try to make a living doing this. Of course, production could also be fun. Sitting hunched over a computer all day, piecing together bits of audio and trying to make the perfect spot. There’s promotions, which is getting the word of the station out there. And then, I could sell my soul and go into sales. These are all things I’ve had varying degrees of experience with. So, you can imagine my surprise as I’ve now been told that my personality is best suited for the most complex and, I think most trying part of the radio station: news.

The journalism instructor has told me this on more than one occasion. It all started last semester, with my class’s first news-related assignment. We were to transcribe a news story and then say if it was a good story or a bad story. I did it, aced it, and the instructor wrote, “I can hardly wait to get you in the newsroom; you get this.” I still don’t know what I got. All I really did was quote a lot of that “you have to paint a balanced picture” rhetoric that Brad Goertz was fond of quoting in my direction back in university.

And then, as the semester started, I was just walking down the hall, and my instructor was at the other end. She yelled out, “So, are you going into news?” As is my natural reaction when someone yells in my direction, I looked over my shoulder to see who the question was being directed it, and then expressed shock when I realized it was me. That’s where we had this very long conversation about how I have a good “news sense” and all that. I just smiled and nodded. That’s when she brought my report. This report was for another class, and was about everything I learned from my various field trips to radio stations. Apparently, upon reading it, the instructor of the field trip course burst into the office of the journalism instructor, read a few quotes aloud and said, “Does Mark sound like a news guy or what?” I’m sorry, but my lasting memory of that report was showing it Mr. Anderson, and him saying, “Gee, Mark, are you sure you, like, want to get that…personal in a report like this?” So, with that running around in my head, I was a little disturbed that my field trip instructor was showing the report to others. But, I guess spilling your guts on a page makes you a guy with no boundaries to one person, and a great reporter to another.

So, you can imagine how I’m feeling right now in my full-blown journalism course. I look forward to every class with dread. As the lecture begins, I get a tightening in my chest; that same feeling I get that says, “I’m not supposed to be here.” I don’t know why, but my instructor’s added encouragement makes me more cynical about the whole journalism process. Right now, I’ve been focusing mainly on the structure of a news story. I’ve had a whole lecture dedicated to writing the lead; the first sentence of a news story. Writing that first sentence is an art in itself. It’s got to be catchy so a listener will want to listen for the whole 30 seconds. Well, 20 seconds really, as you’ll probably stick in about 10 seconds of audio clips. And they’ve got to be the right clips, of course. It’s not enough to just report the news. You’ve got to make it flashy. I really don’t like it. News is not something that should be made “flashy.”

I still puzzle over how I’ve sent the impression that I’d actually be good at news. I guess it’s possible that I’m good at it. As my Dad pointed out one time, people can be very good at things they hate. Look at me. I hated bagging groceries. So maybe I am good at news, or have a good news sense. It doesn’t mean I have to select it was my destiny.

Maybe my cynicism with the news comes from the fact that I am originally a scientist. I mean, journalism and science are quite similar when you look at it. Both are about the search for truth. Both are about weeding out the extraneous information to get at the core truth. Both are about making sure the truth gets out. And both involve incredible amounts of data gathering. In science, your data gathering is easy. You design your experiment and run it through x amount of trials. In news, you get it by finding out as much as you can about your subject. You talk to people, read up on the subject, and such forth.

But see, in all forms of data gathering, there is bound to be some error. That’s why, in science, we try to do as many trials as possible. If you do more trials, then your errors will average out to a lower number. If you could do an infinite amount of trials, then your error will average out to zero. But let’s face it, doing an infinite amount of trials is impractical. There eventually reaches a point (usually dictated by time) where you say, “OK, I’ve got enough data.”

But where do you reach that point in news? In every news story, there will probably be about a hundred people connected to it. And, with news deadlines hanging over your head, it’s just impractical to talk to all of them. That’s the core difference between science and news. A number isn’t going to get upset if it isn’t counted, but a person will.

The way I see it, there is no way to do news without pissing someone off. No matter how fair and balanced you think your story is, there will always be someone outside your office complaining that their story wasn’t told. You didn’t paint the balanced picture because you didn’t talk to them. When you’re just a DJ messing around on the air, that’s OK. It’s entertainment. But with news….

The first responsibility of a reporter should always be to the truth. It shouldn’t have to be made flashy. The truth itself should be enough to carry it. But then, how many truths do you tell? The responsibility is just too great. Because of my original discipline, I pride myself on accuracy. There’s just no way I can be happily accurate with news. I want the security of only two possible outcomes: correct and incorrect. The natural world may work that way, but not the world of people.