Notes On The News: Why journalists aren't perfect
- Jasz Garrett
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
By Jasz Garrett
Juneau Independent
The answer is quite simple, really. The person who typed this is human.
That’s right, journalists aren’t machines, even as AI threatens to take over the industry. Journalists aren’t perfect, and they aren’t always fast, because they’re people who need to sleep and eat, too. Sure, sometimes they stare at the news so long that the blue light of a screen and bold headline still finds them and haunts them in their dreams, but believe it or not, the more sleep-deprived we are, the more mistakes we make. Think about it — haven’t you ever stayed up all night trying to submit an essay only to realize it has a typo or an extra space in it the next morning? Or maybe not – that experience may be most familiar to our reporters, since three are also college students.
My point is, reporters have lives. They, too, sometimes like to take advantage of a rare Juneau sunny day and escape the office. Or even if they don’t like it, they still need to shovel during a historic snowstorm in between covering breaking stories. Sometimes they go to an event just to go to an event. People are surprised to see me without a camera or notepad in front of my face — living. Local reporters are also a part of the community they write about. Like physical, basic human needs, they also need to take care of their mental health. With a declining readership in news nationally, “doom and gloom” is a priority reason people avoid it, describing a sense of fatigue and overload. It gets to us, too. Then a story can come along like a dog being rescued or skiers lighting up the darkest night of the year, and the weight is lifted, for a little while.
That weight can be crushing when you realize you’ve made a mistake.
I asked my editor if the feeling of needing to correct an article ever gets easier. He said no, but that’s how you know you care about your work and are a good journalist. Reporters want to know when they made a mistake. That’s one reason why we add our contact information at the bottom of every article. We may have chugged eight cups of coffee and still missed something in the editing process, or maybe we just didn’t have the information and need an insider’s tip. Contrary to popular belief, mistakes aren’t malicious, but human. Reporters don’t know everything and I certainly don’t pretend to. Stay tuned for a “Notes on the News” about the correction process and the Independent’s policy.
Technology is amazing because we can quickly share information and constantly update an online newspaper, but it’s also limited. It’s easy to forget that the words we type through social media comments will be seen and felt by another human being. I think this is the same thing that happens when people forget the author of an article is a person and may have more going on than we can see. For every several articles that are published, a dozen more are in the works. (A “Notes on the News” is also in the works about how the Independent prioritizes stories.)
Sometimes that’s the issue too — juggling several different topics, you are bound to make a mistake. It’s a lot to hold in your brain, a mental game. While we may not be working overtime plowing the streets, we sometimes don’t move for hours besides fingers flying across the keyboard, causing mental exhaustion. Multitasking is an essential skill as a reporter, but it can also be a downfall. What saves you is knowing how to prioritize your work and manage your time effectively. Plus, reporters literally don’t have enough hours in a day to cover everything – we try our best to be in more than one place at once, but again, we’re only human. (Except for Mark, who has remotely covered three meetings at once multiple times and suddenly popped up on the other side of town with a camera, causing everyone I’ve met to wonder if he has secret teleportation superpowers.)
Regardless of the reason, everyone can mess up sometimes. The important thing is we want to hear when we do and make it better. The Independent is committed to reporting truthful, factual news. “Seek truth and report it.”
And maybe now at 2 a.m., I’ll seek some sleep, too.
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356.
