The Tough Decision

11:26 Aug 10th, 2009 | 1 note

The economic crisis has had a huge impact on traditional journalism in Australia and across the world. Professional journalists from high end publications are being cut back in favor of gossipy, tabloid drivel machines. It’s a major sign that the economic problems we face are far reaching and that not even journalism, one of the key elements of a healthy democracy, is safe.

But you know that the world’s is in an even worse state when the editor in chief of your school paper is telling you to dumb down your content, that what you’re writing is too high brow and that you should shorten your articles because editing them gets to a stage where if anymore was cut out they would stop making sense. That’s right, the school newspaper is telling me to drop my standards.

It’s obvious to me why I’m being told this. None of my articles are anywhere near as popular as the “Caption Contest!” or the “Jokes of the Week!”. Yet my articles bring something resembling real journalism to our school publication, and that’s something I’m proud of. In the eyes of students it seams that articles on the future of technology in education, upcoming important changes to our electoral system, the place of privacy in schools and the importance of backing up school work pale in significance to the importance of what funny caption a picture of a guy falling off a bike should have.

It’s not like I’m being paid for these articles or receiving recognition for my work. I’m simply doing it because I think journalism is a vital aspect necessary to maintain a healthy community, and because I think every school should strive to engage, inform and entertain students in a way that makes them think about the world they live in instead of feeding them the lowest of the low. There is a place for “Caption Contests” and “Jokes of the Week” in our school paper, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of news and opinion that should matter to students. We shouldn’t be lowering ourselves to the lowest common denominator, we should be trying to bring the bottom up.

So now I’m faced with a decision: soldier on through this problem, lowing my tone and trying to continue as normal, or quit the publication as it’s top contributer. It’s a tough decision to make, but if my editors aren’t looking for what I have to offer, I might as well not bother.