*The foreign correspondent who actually shows up on the ground. Why would anyone pay for that? Or pay to read what he or she said? "Shoe-leather reporting" is as dead as "shoe leather" itself.
*It "still matters" – but we've lost the economic ability to do it, even though it matters. We now rely on virality and/or partisanship to move information, and the news is no longer "news" as that enterprise was formerly understood. It's become echo-chamber newsiness, and the idea that trained professionals might attempt to confront objective reality by physically appearing on the spot is archaic. It's like sending in a gentleman cavalry officer in an age of guerrilla terror.
(...)
Shoe-Leather Reporting
In the spring of 2006, Tom Friedman wrote a tribute to his early mentor in United Press International’s London office, the late Leon Daniel. I read it during my Nieman year and it still resonates with me—even more so as we speed forward through our digital age. Daniel had taught him the fundamental fact of all good journalism, memorable advice that stuck with him, just as it does now with me: “If it isn’t based on shoe-leather reporting, it isn’t worth a bucket of beans.”
Today I fear we risk producing a generation of journalists who are coming to consider on-the-ground reporting as a quaint endeavor from another era—the snail mail equivalent of newsgathering: slow, time-consuming and with delayed delivery. After all, with the retrieval of information and opinion from social networking sites making it possible to provide near-instant content ready for upload to the Web, why bother to board a plane, train or even take a taxi across town?
Editors and journalism educators I speak to share my worry. Some speak of a generation of nascent journalists who are supremely tech-savvy—but a segment of whom are becoming less interested in leaving the newsroom, and equally wary of picking up a telephone. “I really believe a good number are actually afraid to interview people,” one professor told me recently.
Most good journalists I know would still travel 1,000 kilometers at a moment’s notice for a good lede, as would I. So off my assistant and I went that day.
In Pingdingshan, we landed on a breathtaking scene: 1,000 police officers—with guns, batons, helmets and riot shields—3,000 striking workers, and an armada of police vehicles that had sealed off the road where the factory was located.
Our arrival sparked a sensation: Police swept in on us demanding papers. The crowd swept in on them to make sure we stayed. With papers in hand and the people behind us—a few shoving the police—the police finally backed off. Then, something extraordinary happened: The people applauded us.
The textile workers’ strike was into its 19th day, and it appeared that we were the first journalists to arrive. We learned later that a brave young Chinese journalist from Hong Kong was also working her way through the crowd. Journalists from a newspaper with offices located on the same street as the strike were banned by the government from reporting on the strike.
Yes, here in a nation of 1.3 billion people in 2010, Pingdingshan was a great story—but one contained to within a few city blocks, with news of it passed on mainly by word of mouth. No wonder people were pleased we’d come. Two local bloggers had done their best to get the news out. But in a country with more than 50 million blogs, Pingdingshan’s plight was lost in cyberspace, a plaintive note in the hum of informational muzak swirling about China every day.
That evening, over tea in a private apartment, four workers with 100 years of experience among them told us stories of hellish working conditions...
