A good journalist should have “two hands”

I suppose most of us do not expect to achieve great success in starting our career, and you think the pleasures will come later. So it would be a little sad if, if we reconsider our lives at work, we know that the thing we're proud of, we've done in our debut. But that's what happened to a reporter I know. It says about a national newspaper, and its articles have been published worldwide.

It's about big subjects and international news. But he has doubts that the most important articles in life, he wrote them forty years ago, when he was 25 years old, and worked for a local daily. It had all started when a homeless man was found dead in a park bench in a small town in south London, where our journalist was practicing in a daily. He had written an article and proposed it to his editor. And if the bums die, they're still dead. “Where is the news here”?

The journalist had responded: “There is no one to help those poor. That's not news? Damn it, it's 1976! ”

Finally, the article was published, and the journalist had started asking how homeless the city was. He turned to competent authorities, but they had denied having a homeless home. So he and a friend had decided to go out on their own nights to search for them. They had gone to a parking lot, in public bathrooms, in abandoned homes, in parks, and had found dozens. The young journalist had written another article, and when it was published, the village fan had challenged him and his friend not only to stop talking and writing but also to do something.

“Do I do?”, the reporter thought. “Gasers don't, but write” But the priest had insisted, so the journalist wrote another article inviting all citizens who wanted to help the homeless to attend a meeting.

About 25 people were present at the meeting. They had established a charity entity called “Nightwatch”, committed to bringing hot soup on three nights of the week, as well as pans or other things that the homeless needed. The young newspaper was one of them and would later become president of the organisation.

I can tell this story with some security, because that reporter was me. Recently, I attended the 40th anniversary celebrations of the charity entity. Now the distribution of hot dishes becomes seven days a week. In these years, the organization has helped hundreds of people find a home, a job, or medical assistance to their mental problems as well as drug addiction.

He has opened a hostel, helped homeless immigrants, and established another organisation for homeless people under the age of 25 who per year cares for thousands of young men and women in London. While I was sitting there listening to all these things, I couldn't think that none of my articles, or the campaigns I was involved in, had a concrete effect, like the order I had written for the homeless 40 years ago.

Why?

Almost all the things we journalists do and what we're proud of, in the long run, don't matter much. In our moments of craziness, we have many, although humility is not characteristic of journalists we can imagine that authorities carefully study our words and that this will, sooner or later, produce some change in their choices.

But it's illusion. In the sense of concrete effects, what really matters (in addition to duty, essential in a democracy, spreading information), is to encourage readers to act. And it's more likely that this will happen if you work for a local newspaper than a national one.

Local newspaper initiatives often manage to save schools that are at risk of closing, improve health services, protect sites of historical interest, and  So on. A local newspaper or radio may push the public to action because it covers a small enough space to allow people who want to engage to meet and do something. No national daily can do that. If you move from a local newspaper to a national newspaper, you may earn more and deal with topics of more general interest, but you miss the chance to change things.

The first morale of history is that local engagement works. Do not cry over a national problem, try to solve it at a local level.

The second is that, thanks to that priest's challenge, at that time I myself went against the rules of journalism, and was kidnapped by the news. In the internet age, with the world filled with people writing and commenting on everything, these rates seem already exceeded. Journalists should be more involved. Today, I am 65 years old, and with another charitable organization, I am trying to imitate myself when I was 25.

* David Randall was editor-in-chief of Independent on Sunday in London. His book of Fire is: “Thirteen journalists almost perfect” / In Albanian from the World.al