A Typical Review from College Review

Downs, Keenan. “Just the Facts.” College Review 11 (2002): 356-61.

Iris Padilla isn’t your usual newspaper reporter. Her prose is fluid and lively. Her tone swings freely from ironic to reverent. Most noticeably, she writes in the first-person, never disguising that she’s involved in the events she describes, or that she cares passionately about her subjects. Simply put, Padilla makes no pretense of objectivity. Yet Padilla writes for the New York Monitor, one of the oldest and most conservative newspapers in the country, and she still thinks of herself as a reporter. As she recently noted in an interview in the Davidson Review, “I’m a reporter, first and foremost. But you might say that I write ’involved reporting.’ I put myself in the action, and then I try to record my own thoughts about what’s before me” (Oram 55). In an essay describing her method, she writes, “I want to report two things: the facts and some human response to the facts” (Padilla “Being” 55).

Padilla is by no means alone in her approach. In the past year, the number of American writers and journalists exploring the limits of reporting—trying to find the line where “objectivity” gives way to something more personal—has risen dramatically. The nation’s prominent newspapers have begun featuring articles by writers who hope to do more than report facts. As Dr. Michael Marcus, Chair of Columbia’s prestigious School of Journalism, has noted, “There’s a real movement afoot. Young journalists are trying to break the mold, to write in a way that’s personal, unique, and gripping. It’s an exciting time to be working in the field” (Kinneavy 4).

Padilla and her peers have received a great deal of praise of late. (Padilla was recently awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her series of articles on standardized testing.) My purpose here is not to challenge the skills or insight of these writers. However, the time has come to examine this movement with a critical eye. Why is this new generation of American journalists so intent on casting themselves as characters in their articles? And what does the appearance of their work say about the state of American journalism?

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Padilla’s articles on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) are typical of the work of her generation. Each article begins not with a statement of fact, and not even with a representative anecdote. Rather, each begins with Padilla herself:

I’m driving down Route 1, just north of Portland, Maine. I’m looking for the house of Lynne Gawtry, a student at Falmouth High School. My plan: to ask her about her experience taking the SAT, and to compare that experience with my own. (Padilla “SAT” A1)

Padilla’s article thus begins more like a personal essay than an investigative article to be published on the front page of one of the country’s most distinguished papers. As Padilla continues, however, she reveals her true skills as a reporter. We gain great insight into the life of today’s high school students and the great pressure placed upon them by tests such as the SAT. Padilla also skillfully weaves into her article the results of her own investigative work: we learn that there is a great deal of cheating among students taking the SAT. Padilla is even able to locate a student willing to reveal her secrets for “beating the exam at its own game.”

Yet, Padilla always returns to herself. It’s as if she doesn’t want to be seen as the great reporter she so clearly is. At the end of one of her articles, for instance, Padilla emphasizes not the stories of the students she’s interviewed, but her own experience after having conducted the interviews.

I think about what Jennifer and Courtney told me, and I think about what I experienced as a high school student fifteen years ago. I’m parked next to a restaurant in Falmouth, and I stay there for nearly an hour. I remember the nightmares I had before I taking the SAT for the first time, and how my mother quizzed me with flashcards before I drove myself to the exam site. I can’t ever forgive my mother for this: instead of reminding me that she’d love me no matter what, she implied (with the help of those flashcards) that I needed to make the grade, that her love was contingent upon my winning a certain kind of success. (Padilla “Maine” A1)

What should readers make of this? This article, like all of the articles in Padilla’s series on the SAT, offers groundbreaking insight into the psychological cost of the SAT for many American high school students. However, the articles are deeply and seriously flawed. In each, Padilla uses her subject as a tool for self-analysis. Her accuracy and fair-mindedness are compromised because she seems so intent on showing how deeply personal these issues are for her.

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This brand of “involved reporting” is newsworthy because it seems so common among journalists of Padilla’s generation. Ralph Lyons, a young reporter for the Chicago Mission-Times, recently completed a series of widely praised articles on the city’s homeless shelters—articles in which he also wrote about his own struggles with alcoholism. Similarly, Megan Karl, a young reporter with the Sacramento Palm, often includes details about her nightlife in her trenchant articles on the California legislature.

Why are these journalists so intent on advertising their personal lives as they report the facts? In a recent interview, Karl has explained that she wants to entice younger readers to care about state politics. “I figure if I make myself seem like a real person, rather than some faceless reporter, I can convince younger readers that they ought to pay attention to the stuff that really affects their lives” (Farris 82). Lyons has made a similar argument in his new book, a collection of his articles from the Mission-Times. “I want readers to respond to me as me. And maybe that way, I can incite some conversation. Readers will see that the reporter is just a guy—a guy with opinions and idiosyncrasies, just like them.” Lyons hopes that by appearing as “just a guy” in his articles, readers will read his work more critically and thereby think more critically about what he’s reporting (Lyons xii).

However, these reporters fail to consider the ways in which their confessions work against their own professed aims. When Lyons writes about his own alcoholism in an article on the corruption on the Chicago homeless shelters, he directs his readers’ focus away from his subject and toward himself. After completing the article, readers are likely to think about Lyons’s condition, not the sorry condition of the city’s social services. Similarly, when Karl explains that she had trouble understanding the California penal code because “she was still reeling from her four martinis the night before,” she hardly encourages young readers to take their state government seriously (Karl A2). Like Padilla, these young reporters squander their considerable gifts when they make themselves the subject of their journalistic work.

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What does this trend tell us about the state of American journalism? At present, it’s difficult to say. Padilla, Lyons, and Karl are all outstanding investigative journalists. Their work deserves to be published and read. However, their work also ought to be edited more extensively. Each reporter is being allowed to shoot him or herself in the foot, article after article.

Do their editors realize this? Probably so. However, one suspects that editors are running these articles hoping to attract more readers. These days, Americans can get their news from any of thousands of sources. Newspapers have to compete with an increasingly diverse range of media. If the editors of the Chicago Mission-Times can print something that will attract a larger percentage of the city’s readers to turn to their paper, they’ll do it. Thus, it may be that this new trend in journalism is not a sign of growing self-consciousness among young reporters, but instead a result of major newspapers’ efforts to attract the attention of the public.

It was recently reported that the readership of the New York Monitor is shrinking. Iris Padilla’s work is proof that editors will compromise even their most sacred journalistic standards to attract more readers.

Works Cited

Farris, Nick. “Talking with Megan Karl.” Fact 3 (2002): 77-91.

Karl, Megan. “Legislature Debates Penal Code.” Sacramento Palm 6 Sept. 2001: A2.

Kinneavy, Marie. “New Journalists Break the Mold.” Time 8 Oct. 2001: 67.

Lyons, Ralph. Chicago Street Beat. New York: Polyhedron, 2001.

Oram, Lewis. “An Interview with Iris Padilla.” Davidson Journalism Review 89 (2002): 50-73.

Padilla, Iris. “On Being an Involved Reporter.” Literary Life 88 (2001): 103-114.

Padilla, Iris. “SAT Raises the Stakes on Kids.” New York Monitor 13 Jan. 2001: A1.

Padilla, Iris. “Maine Kids Face Standardized Testing.” New York Monitor 1 Feb. 2001: A1.

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