gummo

gummo's dreams
2003-01-12 02:50:08 (UTC)

The other kind of journalism

When people ask me what I do, I say I'm a journalist. It
gives them a better understanding than saying I'm a graphic
artist at a newspaper or I'm a graphic journalist or visual
journalist.

Then they usually ask me what kind of stories do I write.
This is where the explanation comes in.

I don't write stories or take pictures but I do reporting
and work closely with writers and photographers.

Instead I will do a diagram of how an accident happened or
I'll do bar charts, maps and design pages. If I say I'm a
graphic artist, people assume I work with advertising. If
you know anything about newspapers, you'd know that
advertising is a whole seperate section of the newspaper.
They're usually on a seperate floor from the newsroom and I
don't the people who work there. Not even sure where that
department is in the building I work.

The worst reaction I ever got was when I was doing research
on summer fires and I went to the "fire control center" or
whatever it's called. I collected maps and talked to the guy
about personnel on the scene, etc. Before I left, I gave the
guy my card. He looked at it with my title of "graphic
artist" and said, "Oh, you're not even a real journalist!" I
was taken aback and for a moment and replied, "No, I am a
journalist! I just don't write stories or take pictures."

In college I took graphic classes, but I also had to take my
fair share of writing and picture editing. If it came to it,
I would be trained to write a story even though I haven't
done it in a long time.

So you see, I am a journalist, just not the traditional kind you think
of




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