Journalism is hard work. I realized that yesterday as I ventured around a highly immigrant-populated area, Vittorio Emanuale. The dirty looks (most people don’t undersand journalists’ goals), the constant “Nos,” and especailly the struggle of communicating with people who speak other languages can be dicouraging. But it makes me a stronger reporter and I don’t think I would have it any other way.
My group and I were seeking immigrants to interview for a feature story. I can’t say that I had a solid plan. I just knew, after observing so many people here from other countries, that I wanted to share their voices. We took the Metro to Vittorio Emanuale after several people recommeded the area. Once we were there, it was up to us to be creative. And with the diversity of nationalities there, I was sure that would be easy. There were people from Togo, Egypt, Moracco, Senegal, Tunisia, Eritrea, Pakistan, Bangledesh, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Ecuador…you get my point).
I could tell that my teammates were slightly flustered by my lack of direction. But journalism is all about the hunt. It’s like being dropped off in the woods with nothing and seeing if you can come back with a masterpiece. Features are not breaking news. And to produce a good one, a journalist has to do the leg work. Feature writing is about engaging in the people and letting them dictate the angle of the story, not finding people to fit the story I want to tell. It’s important to talk to as many people as possible; you can neve have too much. Though the language barrier was more than I prepared for (not just Italian, but Chinese, Swahili, French, Arabic, the list goes on), we had a few very insightful interviews.
Despite the long hours of searching for people, interviewing, fact-checking, editing, (capturing, editing and uploading on the broadcaster’s part), I love my job. It’s not easy and it’s often stressful, but the reward of giving a voice to those who don’t always know they have one, is consistenly worth the effort.
Ciao,
Ang.
