Lesebefehl für junge Journalisten

Mehrfach schon habe ich beklagt (und ich bin nicht der einzige), dass gerade junge Journalisten und Volontäre so ungelenk, unkundig und unwillig wirken, geht es um digitalen Journalismus. Sollten Sie zu jenem journalistischen Nachwuchs gehören, so bitte ich Sie, dies zu lesen:

„I’ve also seen, in my most recent area, science journalism, I’ve seen people do just what I’ve proposed. I’ve seen people, literally, go home, write a blog about dinosaurs (in one case), neuroscience, biology. Nobody asked them. They just did. On their own. By themselves…

After all, when it began in the 1930’s, Time, the weekly news magazine, was a radical idea created by young Henry Luce and his college friends. The New Yorker got its beats from young James Thurber and his buddy E.B. White, and their boss Harold Ross, I was at Rolling Stone when Jann Wenner put together his amazing gang of writers, designers, critics, photographers. Then Ira Glass did it again with Gen Xers. Each of these groups have a shared feel; they are expressing something that belongs to their age, their time.

So for this age, for your time, I want you to just think about this: Think about NOT waiting your turn.

Instead, think about getting together with friends that you admire, or envy.  Think about entrepeneuring. Think about NOT waiting for a company to call you up. Think about not giving your heart to a bunch of adults you don’t know. Think about horizontal loyalty. Think about turning to people you already know, who are your friends, or friends of their friends and making something that makes sense to you together, that is as beautiful or as true as you can make it…

If you can… fall in love, with the work, with people you work with, with your dreams and their dreams. Whatever it was that got you to this school, don’t let it go. Whatever kept you here, don’t let that go. Believe in your friends. Believe that what you and your friends have to say… that the way you’re saying it – is something new in the world.

And don’t stop. Just hold on… and keep loving what you love… and you’ll see. In the end, they’ll let you stay.“

Und nun, liebe Journalisten, junge wie alte, nehmen Sie sich ein wenig Zeit. Und lesen Sie den gesamten, großartigen Text. Es ist eine Rede von Robert Krulwich, einem bekannten US-Wissenschaftsradiojournalisten. Und er hielt sie am 7. Mai vor den Absolventen des Journalismus-Studiengangs der Universität of California in Berkeley. Sie finden die Rede hier.