A question from an inquiring mind: “How can we who live in this age of podcasts, email newsletters, Substack opinions, social media digressions, and 24/7 streaming distinguish between mere information and wisdom?”
Hmm. Four decades ago, when we lived in an age of newspapers and network news, the distinction would have been easier to make. I wrote in my first book on journalism, Prodigal Press, that publications “spiked the spiritual.” Boston Globe editors at my first reporting home got rid of pages not by tossing them in a wastebasket but by impaling them on a spike. That’s commonly what happened with reporting that wandered beyond material matter into religion.
In 1988 I criticized the unwillingness to acknowledge spiritual reality, but it was clear that most of the information transmitted to readers was “factual.” Yes, the Globe was politically liberal and would choose, from among 24 facts, which 12 from that perspective should get into a story—still, while we were not getting wisdom, we were getting information. In Prodigal Press I pleaded for more political and religious variety, and happily predicted that technological advance would give it to us.
Be careful what you wish for. In an age of social media, when everyone can rock, roll, and rant without an editor, we have right facts, left facts, Trump facts, anti-Trump facts, and rump facts, with every barstool a pulpit. I believed then and still do that true wisdom comes only with a knowledge of Christ. But I have more tolerance for those who serve a non-Christian understanding of the world yet still recognize the distinction between serving and sliming.
Here’s an example. Once upon a time The Washington Post, clearly a secular liberal publication, sent reporter Walt Harrington to Alabama to do a story about what a fundamentalist Christian family was like. If Harrington’s editor was Post-typical, the assignment was similar to one an editor in 1900 might have given to an intrepid journalist: Dive into “darkest Africa” and let readers know what the “savages” are like.
Harrington recalled: “I didn’t know how to begin my interview, so I asked for a tour of their house. Mrs. Webster, a sweet woman, walked me through the house, full of tacky teddy bears and knickknacks. ‘Boy, these people have bad taste,’ I thought.” At that point, it seemed, the story could pretty much write itself. Find a progressive protagonist, write about dumb rednecks. Prejudices sustained. Reporting mission accomplished, right?
Wrong. Even critics of the Post should praise what came next. Harrington listened and heard what Mrs. Webster said next:
“This really ugly teddy bear was a gift from the thirteen-year-old girl who moved in with us after her mother kicked her out when she was two months pregnant. She stayed with us, and we took care of her through the pregnancy. And this silly little knickknack is from the eighty-four-year-old woman who my husband takes to the pool twice a week. He carries her out of her wheelchair and into the swimming pool so she can have some exercise.”
Walt Harrington was born three months after me in 1950 and has had a distinguished career in writing and teaching, but to my knowledge we’ve never met. To my regret I’m not familiar with his other work, although I may correct this oversight, as I like titles listed on his University of Illinois professor emeritus webpage: Crossings: A White Man’s Journey into Black America, Intimate Journalism: The Art and Craft of Reporting Everyday Life, and The Everlasting Stream: A True Story of Rabbits, Guns, Friendship, and Family.
I knew in 1988 and still know now that all reporting is directed reporting, directed in some way by some worldview: As Bob Dylan noted, “You’re gonna serve somebody.” I don’t know who or what Harrington served theologically, but I do know that he served honest reporting, the willingness to change his views when his eyes and ears showed him what he did not expect. Moving from Dylan to C.S. Lewis, I respect Mere Journalism, and it’s not to be taken lightly, especially in this age of confusion.
Now that I’m editor in chief of Christianity Today, the instructions I offer reporters are similar to what I would offer at The Washington Post if allowed on the premises. First, report at street level, not suite level. To seek solid information, do not sit in an air-conditioned office, stick your thumb into a pie stuffed with filling that’s probably highly processed, and pull it out thinking you have a fresh plum.
Given the frequency of hallucinations, not just in AI but in barstool pseudo-journalistic yapping, second-hand comments from people also sitting in air-conditioned suites may well be misinformation. Better: See, hear, and smell for yourself. Find human interest, because all humans are interesting. Ask tough questions and push for on-the-record answers so as to develop a tentative sense of what your story may be and the tensions that exist within it: Someone does something to someone else because, but …
“Someone” and “something” allow lots of wiggle room, and young reporters ask how to decide what to look for. It strikes me that since compassion and heroism are such rare commodities, we should look for compassionate or heroic protagonists who face antagonism and persevere in their mission while overcoming obstacles—PAMO, for short.
THAW is another useful memory device: Think, Hunt, Analyze, Write. Experienced journalists do not go out on a story hunt without some sense of what the story is about, but they should emulate Harrington in a willingness to change directions when their hunting yields surprises. They should analyze what they have, not like a lawyer aiming to win a case, but as a human being willing to be touched by other human beings, if not by angels.
That kind of process can reveal true information. Does it approach wisdom? The question is like that of the dead ballplayer who comes to life in the Field of Dreams (in the great movie by that name) and asks, “Is this heaven?” The answer: “No, it’s Iowa.” I want to puts facts into theological context, but these days I’m ready to praise any reporter who observes facts and runs with them rather than settling for propaganda.
We should still aim for heaven but not neglect Iowa.
