October - Studies and Partnership

Posted by Krystyna Hunt in

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I mentioned that meeting and making friendship and relationships was a very difficult thing here didn't I? No time for social clubs, living in a different city, and totally out of sync with 99% of the student body. As I said, at least I had a purpose and I was busy.

There is not a lot of time for thinking in the journalism program. We are too busy doing things. If I thought college would be a place for contemplative walks that inspire higher thoughts this wasn't that kind of college.

Basically we were told to think of ourselves as being hired to apprentice journalism. Every assignment was the job we were supposed to perform in order to keep the job.

At the beginning it was quite simple. In the History of Journalism class we were to make a 5 minute PowerPoint presentation on a famous journalist whose name we would draw out of a plastic bag. The names began with Daniel Defoe in the 17th century, who is considered to be the first journalist. The assignment was to present all the important points and contributions in this person's life. The class had to be aware of who this person and why he was important in the history of journalism.

I pulled the name of Daniel Pearl. This was okay with me because I was aware of his story and quite moved by it. His life and tragic death were the subject of a book, A Mighty Heart, written by his wife, Mariane Pearl, later made into a movie starring Angelina Jolie.

Danny Pearl was an investigative journalist, bureau chief for Asia for The Wall Street Journal who was investigating al-Qaeda connections in January 2002 in Pakistan. For this he was kidnapped by a jihadist group who executed him by beheading him, video-taping his killing and sending the video to the police. His body was cut into 10 pieces and buried in a shallow grave beside a highway outside Karachi, where it was found 3 months later. It was a warning for foreign journalists to stay out of Pakistan.

In researching the story I watched the movie and read the book. I was so emotionally moved by Danny's story and Mariane's love and the awful tragedy of the whole thing. The story consumed my senses all the while I was working on it. I had to design the perfect background for the PowerPoint, I needed the photos and images to be just so and I timed the points in the story to perfection over and over again. I began to wish I had chosen an easier subject, maybe Horace Greeley or Jonathan Swift, people I could never see as contemporaries and potential friends as I could the Pearls.

Prof Marilyn however, docked me marks because I concentrated not on Daniel Pearl's journalistic accomplishments but on the circumstances of his death. Well, he didn't become famous for his journalism. His journalism, although thoroughly professional, was not of world-renown quality all by itself. Had he not been murdered the way he had, he would have been known perhaps to their peers and readers, but not famous. Daniel Pearl's claim to fame is not his writing, but as a martyr to journalism.

But no, that's not what Marilyn wanted. Anyway, I was glad to lose the marks because I could not have done the story the way she wanted, exploring article after article on Wall Street Journal topics while ignoring the elephant in the room which was his death.

Marilyn's next assignment was for us to read at least 3 daily newspapers and select articles that represented certain nine different themes she was covering in her course. Some were common and would be easy to find, but many were obscure like "the purpose of newspapers".

Marilyn is a lover of the physical newspaper and dreads the day it will disappear. I suspect she created this assignment to force us to buy 3 newspapers a day and maybe help save the industry. Ha! In her dreams. I now became a prowler of garbage cans and recycle bins and a cafe thief.