Identify this scenario: The bus driver counts “One, two, three, four” as each camera-laden person boards the vehicle.
If you asked me last week, I’d tell you that’s an accurate description of a side excursion from a European cruise, or maybe a school field trip. Ask me this week, and I’ll tell you it’s a media trip in New Orleans – a large part of how I spent Wednesday and Thursday.
I’m here in the Big Easy interviewing folks from various religious groups about the spiritual and environmental importance of preserving the Mississippi River and other bodies of water in America. Many people of various backgrounds have been speaking at a conference I’ve been covering. The symposium was convened by the Orthodox Christian leader, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
But as a journalist, sitting in a hotel (no matter how gorgeous and luxurious, and no matter how spectacular the views of the river) makes me anxious. How am I getting the real story if I just stay inside the Hilton Riverside? And why did I come all the way out to Louisiana if it’s not to get some experience on the ground? If religious organizations are concerned about preserving the nation’s water, how do I get a look at the water itself, and get a local flavor of what the issue is?
Getting to the river itself is simple — there are signs right next to the media briefing room pointing out the “Riverwalk,” but finding the spots in the swamps where saltwater has recently invaded freshwater territory, causing erosion of the land and altering the ecosystem — that’s a bit more difficult without a guide.
During a media trip on Wednesday, coastal scientist Ivor van Heerden, explains the effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, while standing in front of a levee wall that failed during the 2005 storms. (Michelle Minkoff/MNS)Enter the concept of a “media trip,” in this case organized by the communications team in charge of this week’s symposium. The staffers offer a few excursions that we may sign up for. We meet at the appointed time outside the press office, and about 20 of us climb aboard a bus or chartered car.
On Wednesday and Thursday, we visited fallen levy walls in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans, one of the hardest hit areas by Hurricane Katrina. We took an airboat to tour the swamps and wetlands of southern Louisiana. We met with the mayor of the rural fishing town of Lafitte, whose primary industry has been severely limited by changing ecological conditions.
It’s a great way for journalists to see for ourselves how the issues we cover are affecting communities. It’s a chance to ask questions of experts in the field, and learn from each other. I met colleagues from across the United States and Europe, and we discussed religion, the environment and our cultural and professional backgrounds.
After two days of mixing meetings and field work, knowing who I would be able to get in contact with during these planned interviews helped me place many of the remaining puzzle pieces of my story together.
But after my first media trip experience, I find myself internally debating a few aspects of the merit of these excursions.
Issue 1: I wonder if you’re truly being independent if your itinerary is being dictated by others.
Response: In my case, I knew I wanted to go to the swamp area to see what local organizations were working to restore, and I didn’t think that looking at the local transit website was going to yield a bus line that could take me out that far. The trips made sense because they served the purpose of getting the information that I needed.
Fellow journalists disembark from an airboat touring the southern swamps and wetlands of Louisiana during Thursday’s eight-hour media trip. (Michelle Minkoff/MNS)Issue 2: I wonder what it means when you are covering an environmental issue and taking chaperoned cars and buses out to the area. Are we hurting the environment that our sources are fighting to protect? Is that a conflict of interest?
Response: I would contend that we have to get out there somehow, and at least we aren’t going in 20 separate cars.
Conclusion: Sure, it felt a bit odd to have interviews arranged for me, but I can see how this type of trip could be very useful in war zones, on the campaign trail or, in this case, making the most of the 72 hours I had in an area with which I’m not familiar.
I guess I never thought carefully enough before about just how much journalists could help each other out by building off of each other’s questions. It wasn’t like a Washington news conference. If someone didn’t answer my query, others continued the line of questioning. And I did the same for them. Twenty pairs of eyes found some amazing visuals, my favorite being a man capturing a very large catfish outside our lunch spot. Information that was valuable to one of us was valuable to us all.
At the same time, when one person needed to stop, we all stopped. When someone’s camera ran out of batteries, we all took a quick detour to Walgreens.
I suppose the lesson to take from all of this, to paraphrase John Donne, is that no journalist is an island. Cooperation is both essential and beneficial, as is accepting the direction of local guides. But we must remember to always place great value on our journalistic independence. I constantly remind myself that our responsibility is not to ourselves, our sources or our colleagues and traveling companions, but to the general public that we all serve.
Michelle Minkoff, who is set to graduate from Medill in March, is from the northwest suburbs of Chicago, and holds a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University in English with minors in Jewish studies, journalism and theater. She has interned for Chicago’s PBS affiliate station WTTW, the Boston Phoenix and New England Cable News. She wrote this opinion piece for Washington Reporting 2.0., an occasional column about the experience of reporting.