Monday, September 18, 2006

On Journalists

There goes another tired journalist wandering off in his room in circles. This is the fifth pencil he has broken, the second ream of paper he has crumpled and thrown to the trash can, as he stares back again and again on his notepad and his computer. He has done his investigative reporting and gathered enough data to prove his point, in a very factual basis. The only difficulty, though, is making it interesting for his readers to read.
He has already seen this happen, facts or boring subjects further made boring by the writer or the speaker. The greatest challenge now lies on how can a journalist make his article, however boring the facts may sound, become interesting. You see it happen everywhere in sports like golf and cricket. These men bring excitement to what a majority of the people find as a boring game. Every stroke, ball, spin or anything else has an emotion and a critic to match it along, and they have to keep their listeners glued to the radio for the next ball, the next spin. They bring in as much excitement as a promise or a near miss. “It is, it is, allllllmmoooooosssssttttt there”. This actually sounds familiar in a lot of situations. You get all hyped up or you are always shown that you have a better chance the next time around. You have it in betting in casinos, politicians voted into power, watching sports, and also in writing.
It is an art, and there are practically an innumerable amount of articles or books that are both educational and interesting. People have already fought through in anger over the fact that they were deceived into actually learning something. There does not seem to be any sense on them gaining additional knowledge, but they do seem keen on not knowing further in the first place.
This would go for women who would rather not know if their husbands have an affair, or people who would rather not have heard of new diseases in connection to their vices. There are some things better left unsaid.
But this journalist of ours has interesting stories. He has traveled through mountains, and hills, he has seen the most wonderful horizons and ventured through different cultures. He has faced countless near-death experiences through political turmoil or plainly some slippery road surface or being stuck in a car while in
India. He has had the most amazing travel.
But he does not know how to make his article, which is mainly focused on different animal mating calls and fornication procedures, be interesting to read over watching it in Discovery channel. This book has to hit well in the market if he wants to have another project later on.
But ideas can come, and he used the most universal idea of them all, make it a story. Tell everyone of how he got to places he had to go, and then describe what happened there.
It was still boring.
So here was a better idea, relate what is seen out there to how human beings are, that should definitely hit the spot.
And it does, it was known to be effective and has been used somewhere quite popular, educational channels.
So he ends up leaving the office a little earlier to get himself some coffee in a nearby café. He sits there and watches the world, waiting for some inspiration. A lady tries to hide her flatulence in her best way possible, but ends up making a noise, much like that of a duck mating call. Voila, inspiration, hit it to what is interesting in human beings, the popular being that through stupidity.
On why stupidity seems popular, the journalist cannot figure out, but he does suspect that it has a large role in it being so silly it becomes entertaining, or that it would occasionally be nice to know there’s someone else who has it worse than us, it makes us better off, a more desirable species over that guy in the book, just like in nature.
And so he ventured back to his office, excited and inspired to write his book, only to realize though, that he has forgotten his keys inside the office, so it seems like he might as well go home and sleep over it, get it done the next day. And the next day comes, as he ventures towards the office, he looks forward to human stupidity, for some strange reason, while we are all supposedly looking at improving and evolving the entire planet, we will always have the tendency to look forward for a sort of devolution among others, to somewhat ensure that we are better off, or are getting better than the rest, if you cannot go up higher anymore, just hope that others are slowly sinking in quicksand, that way, you’re a little more fortunate. Then again, that is but a natural instinct. And we might as well let this journalist friend of ours choose to think the way he is thinking, it amuses us, and will continue to amuse us, as he discovers that the human race is not a separate tree from the other animals, but rather, a branch on the animal kingdom tree (that was a cheesy way to end this little story here, but who really cares).

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