Don't Read This. I'm Too Tired, and It Dosen't Make Sense

Perspective and Balance. I keep coming back to it. Perspective and balance.

I want to an interesting event tonight, basically a round table discussion about the role of the ethnic press in the media today, and about the minority reporters who straddle the world between the mainstream press and the ethnic press.

The whole crew was pretty dismissive of the Mainstream media, which I agree with, but the final discussion of the entire evening just reinforced what I had already learned in Shamanism at school: All that it takes to be good at News is what it takes to be good at Anthropology: you have to continually re analyze yourself, your subject, and the relationship between the two.

However, unlike Anthropology, Media adds another new wrinkle: Who, exactly, is the subject? Who are we watching? And how do you know if your even studying the right crew?

Let take, for example, the Fort Dix case. Big Hullabaloo, three of the men arrested were illegal immigrants, lots of this that and the other. Muslims plotting to attack an American army base. Crazy stuff. But no matter how well we hash and re-hash the story, no matter how much we interview enough people and get the right take on Albanians, and get the right take on Muslims...

Because the same week, there was a bunch of true blue Americans down in 'Bama who had grenades, lots of ammo, and were charged with planning to kill as many Mexicans as possible. No mention of terrorism there. No mention of it, really, in many American Main Stream news sources. This is a place where perspective fails.

But the real issue is: do I have the omniscience to ever pull good reporting from my White Southerner Perch? I mean, even if I do manage to guess at what the important news stories are, and even if I am aware of all the realities of reporting, and even if I get to the right place at the right time with the right mindset: Who knows if I'm talking to the right people? Or are there just so many opinions that my perspective and my internal balance wont be enough? How do you battle through?

I'm exhausted and full of self doubt. There is just too much to be constantly weighing every day when you start a new thought. Consciouses truly truly is a curse.

But I can say this with complete confidence: There is no way that another human being has been doing as much thinking about this issue and agonizing about this issue as I have. If there are point in this new Show hire process for having done the thought in what it takes to reach a larger population of ethnic audiences, I have done that thinking. I don't have any answers, but by god... I have perspective. And I have balance. And I don't think its enough to matter.