I don't want to dunk on the Northwestern J-students, in part because I think we need journalists now more than ever and punching down in his profession is extremely shitty, but I do want to tell a story about why we call people who might not want to be contacted for stories.
When I was a first-year reporter at the Baltimore Sun covering crime in the suburban bureau, a teenage girl from my coverage area committed suicide by jumping off a parking garage. My editor asked me to reach out to her family to see if they wanted to talk.
I felt physically sick, staring at the phone. I didn't want to do it. After all, she was not a public figure. She had committed no crime. I thought, seriously, about lying and telling my editor I'd made the call and the family declined to comment. But for some reason, I called.
The teenager's name was Robyn. Her mom answered. I stumbled through an intro. I said I'm so sorry to be calling at a time like this; I understood if she didn't want to talk. But I wanted to give her an opportunity to talk, in case she wanted share something. I held my breath.
The mom said: "I'm so glad you called. Because I do want to talk. I feel like Robyn died of depression the same way people die of cancer. Do you want to come to my house? Do you want to read the poetry she wrote? She was a beautiful person."
I went to her house. She showed me Robyn's poetry. Videos of her. She'd been getting bullied at school, teased for being eccentric and different and artsy, and didn't know how to cope. Her mom and dad just wanted me to understand she was more than a name in the police blotter.
I wrote the story. You can read it here. baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-20… When it came out, I went to return some pictures to her mom, Jackie. I was more nervous than I've ever been in my career, before or since. But Jackie gave me a moment of grace I will never forget.
"I want to thank you," she said, as I handed back the pictures. "I feel like I don't have to explain myself to people anymore; people who might be silently wondering why I didn't help Robyn more. I can just hand them your piece. I don't have to have 100 awful conversations."
Reporting on difficult topics has always been hard. Sometimes you get screamed at by people who, to be honest, have a right to scream at you. I've been screamed at by families before, hung up on, and even felt threatened. But good reporters still make those calls. Why?
Because sometimes people *want* to talk. Sometimes they understand there is a greater good at stake, or that talking helps. If you show them enough empathy, they might even — one day — be grateful you called.
Even the best college journalists make bad calls. I made plenty. Thankfully, there was no Twitter to sneer at me for not "getting it." Empathy isn't just something we ought to extend to our sources, it's something we ought to extend to the next generation of journalists.
We're in big trouble if we climb the journalism ladder, forget how hard it was to climb, and also roll our eyes at those now trying to climb — while occasionally slipping — a much more treacherous and wobbly ladder.
