Practicing journalism, in front of everyone

Nothing says “pack journalism” like the commotion that erupts on social media when somebody breaks one of our hallowed professional rules.

Journalists know that the rules are what prevent us from committing what unfortunately now has to be called genuine fake news. Going by the book separates us “real” journalists from the amateurs, the charlatans, the gossipmongers and anybody with internet access who likes to make stuff up.

Stitching this rulebook together are the intricate threads that distinguish what is private — nobody’s business but your own — from what is news. Journalists like to call this “the public’s right to know.” It’s a right they hold sacred.

So here is the violation — or abdication — that had journalists literally atwitter: This month Jeff Sessions, a former U.S. Senator and very recent attorney general, gave a speech at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Some students went to the talk, while others protested his very presence on their campus.

The Daily Northwestern, properly, covered both.

But while the lecture was probably forgettable, the protest turned into a shoving match with police. Participants were quoted; photographs were taken; all pretty routine. But one student, captured after being knocked to the floor, didn’t just find her photo unflattering; she dubbed it “trauma porn.” Others objected to being contacted by phone for interviews.

Reflecting on this backlash, the campus paper’s staff deleted some of its coverage and issued an apology.

“Ultimately, The Daily failed to consider our impact in our reporting,” said the statement, signed by eight editors. “We know we hurt students that night, especially those who identify with marginalized groups.”

This is where the student journalists, in the eyes of their adult counterparts, broke the sacred rule.

Charles Whitaker, dean of Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, agreed. “The Daily had an obligation to capture the event, both for the benefit of its current audience as well as for posterity,” he said in a statement. But he also asked all those so swift to judge to “give the young people a break.”

The truth hurts, and it also sets you free. That’s the conundrum for journalists young and old. It’s why folks love us and hate us.

On its slick surface, the Northwestern case is one of aspiring journalists whose frontal lobes haven’t closed covering fellow students whose frontal lobes haven’t closed. But it’s been intriguing — and heartening — to read their earnest discussions about how hard it is to write about someone on a Sunday and sit beside that person in class on Monday.

Yes! This is the essence of community journalism, finding a way to tell stories that is honest and at the same time respectful, so you can look confidently into the eyes of your latest subject on your way to the deli counter at Publix.

“We can still be serious student journalists but still have more empathy,” one senior at Harvard told The New York Times. “I think the question of empathetic journalism is, at least for us on the inside, what’s at the heart of it.”

I have soaring hopes for these rookies.