Journalists Explain Themselves To High School Students ‘Pretty Respectable Career’ Meets Some Skepticism

Develop thick skin.

Check everything twice.

And no, it isn’t like in the movies.

Such was the advice about the news business Monday at a high school journalism conference at North Idaho College. About 350 students from Idaho, Montana and Washington showed up.

The event was part of NIC’s “Popcorn Forum,” a free series of speakers throughout the school year.

“We wanted to give them a real-world view of what’s out there,” said David Gunter, president of the North Idaho chapter of the Idaho Press Club, which sponsored Monday’s forum. “We’d like them to see that this is a pretty respectable career, one that you can take pride in.”

Many students were skeptical.

“The perception of the media today - they’re just a few steps better than lawyers,” said Miranda Ross, a senior at St. Maries High School.

“Sometimes they can be obnoxious,” said Jo Stevens, a senior who edits the school paper at Superior (Mont.) High School.

“I’m interested in writing, but I wouldn’t get into reporting,” said Betsy Whitehead, of St. Maries High School. “It’s too dirty.”

Columnists, reporters and an editorial cartoonist tried to combat those views.

“Indeed, those sorts of people do exist in journalism,” said Eric Nalder, investigative reporter for the Seattle Times. “But they don’t do well.”

“I don’t work for my editor or my publisher,” Nalder said. “I work for those 35-cent-a-day stockholders who buy my newspaper.”

“My goal is to get people thinking,” said Milt Priggee, editorial cartoonist for The Spokesman-Review. “If I am not provoking debate, apathy sets in. And if apathy sets in, Hitler sets in.”

He cited the dozens of letters to the editor - many of them critical - that his cartoons inspire each year.

“Can you touch democracy? Yes,” he said, unfolding an editorial page. “This is democracy, where our thoughts and ideas are debated with each other, so we can decide in which direction we want our society to go.”

Out of more than 3,000 of Priggee’s cartoons that editors have printed in his nine years at the paper, he said, 110 were rejected. He showed a few of them. One involved flatulence at the start of the Bloomsday race. Another, objecting to politicians wrapping themselves in the flag, depicted then-President George Bush as a nude streaker.

Despite sporadic jabs at each other, Coeur d’Alene Press columnist Dave Bond and Spokesman-Review columnist Dave Oliveria agreed that journalists shouldn’t take themselves too seriously.

After all, Bond pointed out, broadcasts fade away into the atmosphere, and newspapers end up lining the parakeet cage.

“We’re not carving anything in stone,” said Bond. “This is history’s frantic first draft.”

, DataTimes