LJWorld.com

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Sometimes it baffles me that I came to school to be a journalist. The principles that journalists hold dear—fairness, accuracy, ethics, objectivity—are concepts that seem too far-fetched, yet obviously innate, to be taught.

This is the last week of my journalism education, and all I’ve become is increasingly skeptical of journalism as an institution. The face of journalism is changing, and we desperately need a makeover, inside and outside.

Today, we’re mostly fretting how the Web is turning the newspaper into a fiber cemetery, but it doesn’t seem like much is being discussed about how we gather information, whom we talk to and how we talk about it.

Journalists are taught to find the two sides to every story and to give each side its due share of time. We are instructed to be uninvolved, to hide our political affiliations and to delete our personal Twitter feeds. If robots could write the news, we’d give them a deadline.

Journalists are living, breathing, caring human beings. Does it make sense anymore to expect us to be uninvolved and disinterested, functioning as referees instead of participants?

A new debate has emerged about whether to allow reporters and editors to have blogs that share their views on what they cover or to detail internal problems or thoughts. Some fear this might hurt journalists’ or the publication’s credibility. But doesn’t inadvertently tailoring stories to fit advertisers’ needs or talking to only two sources do the same thing?

Perhaps this need for human opinion and error helps explain Fox News’ once-again high ratings or my generation’s ditching of the newspaper for magazines, blogs, the Daily Show or reader-ranked news, like Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, the Weblist or Reddit.

Instead of aiming for objectivity, let’s go for thoroughness, accuracy, fairness and transparency, as Dan Gillmor suggests. When we’re mad as hell or when we want to issue a call to action, we should be able to do that.

Blogs provide that much-needed transparency. This move could spell the downfall of what we think of as traditional detached journalism for opinion journalism. Readers already go to multiple sources for multiple points of view and takes on a single subject, so let’s stop being the secretive wizard behind the curtain.

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The task seemed incredibly straightforward: Buy a thermometer and take temperature readings twice daily for a month. Compare the temperatures to other weather stations in Lawrence and data from previous years.

But I messed it up the first day.

I lived in a tangle of student apartments, so I didn’t know where to put the thermometer. I didn’t know when to read it. Should I have two readings 12 hours apart? Was it actually feasible to read it daily at 10 a.m. and 10 p.m.? What if I had other plans at those times? What happened if my thermometer was stolen or mowed over (which it was … twice)?

Even as a journalism and environmental studies major, I didn’t understand the data I was collecting. How accurate was my temperature record if I missed a reading? In a seemingly simple experiment, I saw the pitfalls of synthesizing even small amounts of data. Who decides what information is told and what isn’t?

Most people don’t see the similarities between scientists and journalists (especially all the people who ask me what I’m going to do with my life), yet their missions are incredibly similar: take reams of complex information and make it understandable.

But understandable to whom? The revival of green in the last few years has given birth to the environmental beat at newspapers and magazines. Stories about the environment frequently make headlines. Joe Sixpack can learn about recycling and compact fluorescent light bulbs and methane tax.

Unfortunately, that’s where the environmental beat has seemed to end. We can talk about driving less and the greenest underwear to buy, but environmental journalists have an obligation more than most other journalists to move beyond the basics.

And that’s where the environmental beat has limited us. Journalists can’t know when the basics have been covered enough. When has everyone learned about organic food or carbon dioxide? When do we move on to CAFOs and coal-fired power plants?

Journalists, in trying to write for their audience, leave out a lot of information out of necessity. But when do we graduate to the next level?

I don’t know the answer. I can’t even take the temperature correctly.

— Lauren Keith

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I keep a running mental list of the strange, time-consuming ways that my professors access Google. While everyone else in class is happily chatting and ignoring him, I watch my confused professor go to the Start menu … find Firefox … open Firefox. Loading, please wait.

My blood starts to boil as he announces to the class that he is going to do a Google search, which sounds like a thinly veiled cry for help. After blankly staring at the computer screen for a few more minutes, he finally finds that elusive Google buried in his list of bookmarks, and 15 minutes later, class can finally begin. I shudder to think how many times this scenario repeats itself on the KU campus, across the country or even in my own life.

Unfortunately, this has turned me into a discriminator. I am an ageist.

Ageism is usually the negative stereotyping against people based solely on their age. Wikipedia frighteningly categorizes it with other elements of discrimination, such as race wars, genocide and slavery, which is light-years away from me (a 21 year old) fearing the technological abilities of pentagenarians.

But ageism has very real repercussions, especially in journalism school. I think I’m on the cusp of some generation, a group of soon-to-be graduates who are expected to know how to use Photoshop, HTML and Twitter but many of whom slip through the cracks because they can’t write well or punctuate.

As KU’s School of Journalism is looking to change its curriculum to buddy up with the onslaught of social media, I have to wonder who will be learning from this help session, the students or the professors?

Journalism shouldn’t ignore technology, but if we stray too far from our core of teaching good writing, we could fail an entire generation of students.

Facebook, Twitter or Google Maps won't stop newspapers from dying. But good writing might.

— Lauren Keith

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Twitter was the first social media that I was ever skeptical of. Maybe it was something in the way that every CNN broadcast had to include something stupid about it. Maybe it was because I already knew what my three friends who were using the service had for breakfast. Maybe it was because I knew if I looked at one more cute guinea pig photo, I would have to officially declare my life a waste of time.

As I spent more time with Twitter, I was finally able to unlock its potential.

From the beginning, the Internet was hailed as this great technology that would bring us information and bring us together. At first, the Internet didn’t seem to bring us much: porn, videos of dancing hamsters (RIP Geocities) and the breakfast updates of friends far and near.

But then the Internet grew up into something more meaningful. It became the way for people to check into the parts of the world that they couldn’t see at the moment.

As the Internet grew, it became harder to see what my next door neighbor was doing. Where Google failed us, Twitter stepped in.

I spent a few months completely out of my element in Germany this summer, and when I came home, I was desperate for a sense of community. It was something that I hadn’t ever felt before, and I wasn’t sure where or if it could be found.

Twitter has provided that for me. Through the #Lawrence hashtag and the new lists feature, I can check the pulse of what is happening in this community and check in with people I know and people I don’t.

In the broadest definition of the word, news is what people are doing. Twitter is the best, although still very selective, aggregator of news in a place.

The Tweeple of Lawrence might not be journalists, but that’s not the argument. I learn more about the people who live here from Twitter than I ever could watching or reading the news or even from another social media service.

— Lauren Keith

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The revolution will not be tweeted. At least that’s what we journalists hope.

While the mainstream media were sleeping, complacent with the one-way stream of information that flowed from behind the wizard’s curtain, the Internet awoke. Citizen journalism, through the power of the Internet, easy-to-understand wikis and social networks, has changed the “people formerly known as the audience” into important, information-wielding contributors to what’s happening in our world and how people learn about it.

What was once us-telling-you has now become an all-you-can-tweet buffet of information.

We know you hate us. Some years, journalism tops the list of the least respected careers.

However, the concepts of journalism and the so-called mainstream media have become detached and no longer represent the same thing. Who controls what is news has changed. The New York Times’ idea of what's important is very different than Digg's.

But maybe “professional” journalists and citizen journalists aren’t so different after all. We both have our biases, liberal or conservative, and we lose sight of objectivity. We have our own agendas. We could all stand to be fact-checked. And you’re just as interested in Lindsay Lohan as we are.

So perhaps this whole war of the mainstream media machine against Joe Wikipedia is completely unfounded. Whatta ya say, truce?

—Lauren Keith

It's strange to have a 21-year relationship with something but to hardly know it at all. I grew up in this state, but Kansas and I haven't ever known each other intimately. To me, it seemed like Kansas didn't want to get to know me. It hid its beautiful face behind boring chapters in history textbooks, flat fields that appeared to be full of nothing and some of the most yawn-filled turnpike driving in the entire country.

Only after I spent a few months in Germany this summer did I realize the importance of place. I spent just one day in Berlin, a city of way too many people for my mind to handle, sitting on a bench feeling a little like Zach Braff in the couch scene in the 2004 film "Garden State," life flying by me without anything sinking in.

That's when I knew that Lawrence and Kansas had to be different. They meant something to me. Berlin didn't, no matter how many silly sight-seeing tours I went on.

So what about a sight-seeing tour of Lawrence? What sights elude KU students who think that the world ends at Mass Street? (I used to think that too, but now that I live on Mass, I'm forced to break outside of that boundary.) It took me three years to realize that I knew so little about the place that I call home.

My partner Ally Shaw and I drove to different sights around Lawrence, possibly hoping to rekindle that relationship with Kansas. Here's what we found:

1. Plow at 27th and Crossgate http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... ...OK, or maybe what we didn't find. Ally and I drove past the plow a few times before we finally broke down and Googled better directions, and we happened to realize we were right where we were supposed to be. Technology may be killing us, as one side of the plow's graffiti reads, but for us, it kept the plow alive.

2. Water Tower on Sixth Street in West Lawrence http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... We are unsure why this is an important Lawrence landmark, but we did enjoy the scenic drive to get there!

3. Wading Pool in South Park http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... Unfortunately, we came too late to see anyone wading.

4. Bowersock Dam http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... The Lawrence City Commission recently approved plans to spend up to $2.4 million to repair the Bowersock Dam. The dam is more than 100 years old and is leaking, according to federal regulators.

5. Amtrak Station near Seventh and New York http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... This is a place that I hold near and dear to my heart, especially after being amazed by the train system in Germany. I've taken the 12:32 a.m. train to Newton and lived to tell the tale. The group Depot Redux has started restorations on the depot, and each day, it looks a little more lively.

6. Watkins Bank Building http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... I'm such a sucker for architecture in Kansas from the late 1800s. This is an absolutely stunning building that now houses the Watkins Community Museum of History.

7. Former Liberty Memorial High School http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... Formerly Liberty Memorial High School, Central Junior High is one of the oldest schools in Lawrence. The school's mascot is the mustang.

8. Giant metal sphere used to make paper http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... This landmark took us the longest to find, despite all the claims that we read about it being "giant." We still aren't sure about where it came from or how it ended up resting near the parking garage near Seventh and Rhode Island.

9. El Matador http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... El Matador Cafè is one of the oldest still-standing buildings in Lawrence. However, the Cafè seems to be in two separate buildings and we were unsure which of the two is older.

10. Former Lawrence Fire Station #4 http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... The Underground Railroad Association of Douglas County would like to turn this former Lawrence Fire Station #4 into The Grover Barn Underground Railroad Interpretive Center/Abolition Museum. The building would house information about the history of the structure as well as the history of the Underground Railroad and would be used to teach schoolchildren and tourists.

11. Polaris Missile in Centennial Park http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... The Polaris Missile was constructed during the Cold War. Money to purchase the land for the park was raised by school children then sold to the City for $1 in 1954. The park is currently a hot spot for college students to play disc golf.

12. Mural at Hobbs Park softball stands http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... This mural on the back of the stands of Municipal Stadium was put together by the East Lawrence Neighborhood Association in 2004. The mural showcases this history of the neighborhood, depicting images of Quantrill’s raid and games played at the stadium.

13. Clinton Lake http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... It was hard to resist the pull of swimming, boating and hiking on the lovely Sunday afternoon that we visited Clinton Lake.

14. ATSF Locomotive in Watson Park http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... It's amazing how the importance of trains diminished so quickly in the United States, and we now view them like they're zoo animals: something that we observe behind the gates.

15. Bandstand in South Park http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... The William Kelly Bandstand celebrated its centennial in March of 2006. Today the bandstand still serves its purpose as the City Band performs concerts during the summer.

16. Former Union Pacific Depot http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... This former train station now houses the Lawrence Visitors Center. This depot was a passenger station until 1971 and used to be a major community gathering place.

17. KU Boathouse in Burcham Park http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... The Boathouse in Burcham Park is used by the University’s rowing teams. The area surrounding the Boathouse is full of activity as locals fish and picnic along the river.

18. Japanese Friendship Garden http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... This treasure near 11th and Massachusetts, completed in 2000, was created for the 10th anniversary of Lawrence's sister city status with Hiratsuka, Japan. The garden is one of the best places to relax in town.

19. The Granada http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... The Granada has been a vaudeville theater, a movie theater, a comedy club, and a concert venue in its 70 years. In the upcoming months, the Granada will host the Airborne Toxic Event, Tech N9ne and Young Buck, among others.

20. The Pat Dawson Billings Nature Area http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... Getting turned around in West Lawrence led us to find this slice of nature in the middle of a neighborhood. The area includes native grasses, cycling and walking paths and areas to fish.