"Bill Denton" wrote in message
...

Think of everyone you know, and what their job is. There is no way a
journalist, or anyone else, can be an expert in all of those fields.

Your beeper goes off at 3:00 AM, drive 50 miles into the middle of
nowhere,
and there's your story. You don't have the slightest idea what you are
looking at, and there are no experts around to explain it. And what does a
real journalist do? He/she looks at the camera and says:

"I am standing in front of a vast crater, approximately one mile across. I
cannot determine how deep it is, some type of smoke is wafting up from the
bottom. The crater is surrounded by large, unidentifiable, torn and broken
pieces of metal, each about four to five feet long and two or three feet
thick."

That's how the pros do it. You don't need to know anything about it to
report it, as long as you stick to what you observe with your senses. If
you
know something about the story, put that information in, but only what you
actually know. And keep your BS detector on high; possessing a uniform
doesn't make someone an expert, neither does possessing a degree.


Exactly. A good journalist stands in place of your eyes and ears and
describes the scene or event, unemotionally, because you can't be there.
But good journalism doesn't sell newspapers or win awards.