Keep your eye on the prize

Last Thursday, journalism and mass communication and other students looked on with awe as the best of the best in the School of Communication walked to the stage to receive yet another award.

The GRW Theater was packed, and I sat in bewilderment near a group of students that commented that the JMC Awards Night was strikingly similar to the Oscars.

Except Kris Radder wore flannel pajamas.

With commencement looming ever closer and the horrifying notion of being pitched from our ivory tower, I have to admit: after four years of journalism courses, have we forgotten the point of being a journalist? Although it is universal in the business world, does hubris have a place in journalism?

Awards like those presented last Thursday are a reminder of our self-rewarding society; never mind being comfortable that you've done the job right, but throw in a public display of feigned humility to reassure your grandeur as a human being.

For journalists, the purpose of reporting is lost if the journalist's intention is to win awards and public recognition. However, the intentions of the winners of the 2008-2009 journalism awards might have been sound.

After all, they certainly did the work.

I've thought for some time now that senior broadcasting major Annie Perri lives in the Green Room at the Wood Street studios, and senior photography major Kris Radder was born with a Nikon strapped around his neck.

Annie won three awards last week. Kris did as well.

The service those individuals have provided to the development of the School of Communications is enviable. My concern lies in further generations of award-winners: will they understand who they work for as a journalist?

It is a frightening reality that journalism has become a business of "gotcha" stories and less of an ideological profession. Journalists who are nothing but a suit and hair gel walk the line daily between being able to do their jobs and becoming too self-important.

"People get caught up in this career and it's not for the money," a wise professor once told me. I should also think that it should not be about the awards either.

My notion is simple: report, write and edit your story. Then worry about awards.

Journalism isn't about accolades or recognition; journalism is a critical state in a democratic society. Perhaps the purpose of journalism gets lost in translation with the wavering line between business and journalism.

In its simplest form, the point of journalism is to seek knowledge and share it with the surrounding community. The journalist isn't supposed to have a voice in his or her own reporting. They aren't supposed to have transparent personalities. And they certainly are not meant to seek opportunities in which the payoff is their name on a wooden plaque.

The payoff should be a state of mind a journalist earns when he or she writes something that is true, relevant and important-that should be the ultimate award.

I am comfortable with the thought that some will say I'm complaining (yet again) because I didn't receive an award.

Although it's true I did not receive an award last Thursday, I don't need it-let the more deserving have them.

Anyways, I'm not sure if I could have feigned public humility quite as well as some of the winners.