By: Lawrence Kreymer

There aren’t many people in the journalism world who have seen the field adapt and change over the course of the last three or four decades. Rick Telander is one of them.

Telander has been a sports journalist for nearly five decades, starting off at Sports Illustrated and then taking a job as the sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1995.

He has seen the evolution of journalism throughout those years — in particular, sports journalism.

The field is not nearly the same as it was when Telander started. For instance, access to athletes and coaches has diminished due to the growth of social media.

“Athletes more and more realize that they don’t want to deal with actual sports journalists, they don’t have to,” Telander said. “In fact, most of the sports beat writers that I know, they mostly follow the athletes’ Twitter feeds or their Instagram accounts. They actually wait for the athlete to make pronouncements.”

The Covid-19 pandemic has also had a major impact on sports journalists’ ability to do one-on-one interviews with athletes and coaches. Locker room access after a game — a staple in the field for years — has basically vanished in the past two years.

“In fact, I went to a Bears game last fall — I hadn’t been to one in a long time — and it was useless,” Telander said. “You sit in the pressbox, watch the game [on a] little monitor  with no sound that is over 100 yards away — it’s so far away. You don’t know what’s going on, and you [can’t] go into the locker room.”

The lack of in-person interaction with the teams beat writers are covering has lessened the importance of journalists attending and covering games, according to Telander.

“We are kind of irrelevant,” he said. “If our access means nothing, which it seems to mean very little, maybe we have better writing skills — I don’t know if those are appreciated — or maybe we have analysis, but that only goes so far, too,”

Sports journalism has been evolving for years with the growth of social media. It’s no longer that journalists have most of the control in spreading information out to the public about what happened in a game or meeting.

Teams have more power than ever to release the information they feel is the most pertinent to their audience — and that includes cutting off access to journalists when they deem their reporting too negative.

“It was two years ago, [former Chicago Sun-Times reporter] Madeline Kenny, the [Chicago] Sky boycotted her because they did not like what she wrote,” Telander said.

The increase of social media platforms has also allowed more people to get involved covering sports — but that has not necessarily resulted in more honest and truthful reporting.

The last few months have seen some egregious and false reporting circulate online, even with some of those stories coming out from established reporters in their respective sports.

“If you are first, even if it’s wrong, you will get the clicks — and you are awarded for that,” Telander said. “This is the era of disinformation. … So, if you don’t come first and you don’t say something shocking in some form, then you are going to wither and die, and that’s the thing we have not been able to control as far as fact and truth.”

Even if someone’s reporting ends up being false, the clicks and attention that story generates can greatly benefit a company. It’s very rare that a journalist ends up being held accountable due to their reporting, especially if they work for a bigger organization that might prioritize clicks over truthful stories.

“When I used to write for Sports Illustrated, you have the story in and it went through three layers of checking and the legal department,” Telander said. “When you got called by the fact checkers all the time, we don’t even have those anymore.”

Sports journalism is at a crossroads of figuring out what’s more important: doing real and reliable reporting that goes beyond the final box score or continuing to prioritize reporting on trades and acquisitions that may or may not end up being true.

Leaders of these organizations have the power to decide the future of the field. It would behoove these leaders to focus more on getting the reporting right over getting it first.

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By Claire Malon

 During her tenure as managing editor and anchor for PBS NewsHour, Judy Woodruff has built a legacy for being one of the most trusted sources of news in the nation.

With this reputation, it may surprise some to discover that Woodruff doesn’t believe in the concept of objectivity that so many journalists live and breathe by.

“I don’t believe there’s any such thing as objectivity,” said Woodruff. “I’m not a machine, I’m not a computer, I’m a human being.”

From their time in j-school to their first reporting jobs and throughout the rest of their careers, journalists are taught to be unbiased, objective conduits of the news.

Yet journalists, like everyone else, are people with different identities, backgrounds and lived experiences — and these things impact who we are and how we report the news.

But to Woodruff, this isn’t something we should try to hide or be ashamed of, nor does it mean we can’t fulfill our journalistic obligation to the public.

“I think what I can do is try to be as fair as possible as I report the news [and] make sure that I’ve listened to all sides and given what I think is the appropriate weight to the arguments that people are making.”

Rather than being beholden to objectivity, Woodruff defines her career as one guided by accuracy, integrity, and empathy.

“I’ve always been about reporting only what you know, and only what you can confirm. That’s the kind of reporting I was taught,” said Woodruff. “Being fixated on the facts.”

Last year, Woodruff was awarded the first ever Peabody Award for Journalistic Integrity. As a reporter with over five decades of experience, Woodruff has always sought for her work to be integrous.

“I think it’s about honesty, it’s about being transparent in our work, it’s about putting the news and facts ahead of everything else.”

 But for Woodruff, who has been an outspoken advocate for women’s rights and people with disabilities, the best reporting requires empathy.

“I think there’s a way to reflect the facts, and to be true to your role as a journalist, but still to show some empathy for the people involved,” said Woodruff. “So that’s been my philosophy of reporting, is tell all sides of the story, but be humane about it and be human.”

Woodruff underlined the importance of this kind of journalism — one defined by accuracy, integrity, and empathy.

“To me, freedom of the press, the ability to report, the ability to report with accuracy and with integrity is foundational to our democracy. You can’t have a democracy without a free press.”\

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By Claire Malon

 During her tenure as managing editor and anchor for PBS NewsHour, Judy Woodruff has built a legacy for being one of the most trusted sources of news in the nation.

With this reputation, it may surprise some to discover that Woodruff doesn’t believe in the concept of objectivity that so many journalists live and breathe by.

“I don’t believe there’s any such thing as objectivity,” said Woodruff. “I’m not a machine, I’m not a computer, I’m a human being.”

From their time in j-school to their first reporting jobs and throughout the rest of their careers, journalists are taught to be unbiased, objective conduits of the news.

Yet journalists, like everyone else, are people with different identities, backgrounds and lived experiences — and these things impact who we are and how we report the news.

But to Woodruff, this isn’t something we should try to hide or be ashamed of, nor does it mean we can’t fulfill our journalistic obligation to the public.

“I think what I can do is try to be as fair as possible as I report the news [and] make sure that I’ve listened to all sides and given what I think is the appropriate weight to the arguments that people are making.”

Rather than being beholden to objectivity, Woodruff defines her career as one guided by accuracy, integrity, and empathy.

“I’ve always been about reporting only what you know, and only what you can confirm. That’s the kind of reporting I was taught,” said Woodruff. “Being fixated on the facts.”

Last year, Woodruff was awarded the first ever Peabody Award for Journalistic Integrity. As a reporter with over five decades of experience, Woodruff has always sought for her work to be integrous.

“I think it’s about honesty, it’s about being transparent in our work, it’s about putting the news and facts ahead of everything else.”

 But for Woodruff, who has been an outspoken advocate for women’s rights and people with disabilities, the best reporting requires empathy.

“I think there’s a way to reflect the facts, and to be true to your role as a journalist, but still to show some empathy for the people involved,” said Woodruff. “So that’s been my philosophy of reporting, is tell all sides of the story, but be humane about it and be human.”

Woodruff underlined the importance of this kind of journalism — one defined by accuracy, integrity, and empathy.

“To me, freedom of the press, the ability to report, the ability to report with accuracy and with integrity is foundational to our democracy. You can’t have a democracy without a free press.”

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By Sadie Fisher

I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, packed with paper mills and power plants. I lived alongside working-class adults and quickly learned the power of a good work ethic, determination, and tenacity.

Producer Mary Murphy also grew up in a small town. Just thirty minutes outside of Providence, Rhode Island, her hometown was full of blue-collar folks working in mills. “I think it was really good to have spent the first 14 years of life in a small working-class town,” Murphy said. “It was just really good training for life.”

Her father became more and more successful with his career and because of how small Rhode Island is — Murphy became accustomed to brushing shoulders with powerful people.

“I think that that really helped me as a reporter,” Murphy said.  “I didn’t shirk from talking to people and I wasn’t afraid of power or timid in the face of power.”

She is now an Emmy award-winning writer, producer, and director. She started as a columnist at the New York Post and had a few more reporting jobs before transitioning to CBS News as a producer.

Now — she has her own production company where she’s created projects, films, and documentaries, including her work for PBS on author Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and the life of Helen Keller — but that wasn’t always her dream.

“I loved books,” she said. “I thought, you know, being an editor or working for an editor or some way, being around books would be really great.” Murphy graduated with an English degree and went to publishing school — but her curiosity and determination to get a job landed her first reporting gig.  She heard a columnist speak at a college lecture and decided to send her resume to him.

The reason she got an interview and the job? “My dad was an accountant, and he was outfitting his entire office with computers which was like a big deal and nobody else had done that.” She went with his employees to an institute to learn word processing – using a groundbreaking piece of technology at the time. And because of this curiosity to learn, she became a columnist at the New York Post.

Her career in hard news ended when she left CBS in 2005 — and that’s when she let her passions take over.  “I was out on the street trying to figure out what to do next and I did a variety of things,” she said. “And then what I did was my To Kill a Mockingbird movie, which I kept calling my love project.”

That love for what you do is what Murphy said journalists need to have. “If you really want to do something just keep doing it.” It may be hard, she said, but if you love it, it will be worthwhile. And although she said news cycles have changed and the way people ingest their news have shifted, the role of journalists will always stay the same.

“I think everybody needs journalists. I think it’s in the public interest.” Murphy firmly believes, “It’s always going to be important and valuable.” New journalists, she noted,  must be diligent with what they see online and that “you should never take what anyone says at face value.”

She understands that it’s easy to fall down the trap of trying to be right or proving a point — but that journalists need to remember that it’s important to stay out of that mindset.  “It’s not our jobs as journalists to win an argument or to even engage in an argument,” Murphy said. “It’s our job to report it down the middle and that isn’t always popular right now, but it’s very necessary.”

Murphy didn’t let curiosity kill the cat — in fact — it’s the thing that has kept her career going. “I think you have to stay curious. I learned to be resourceful and to have the conviction of knowing I had a good idea.”

As my college career ends and my journalism career begins, I’m going to keep my curiosity alive and focus on the truth. And I’m well on my way to joining Mary Murphy as a journalist from a small mill town.

Phil Ponce speaks about the importance of unbiased reporting after 4 decades of working at WTTW

By Richie Requena

Phil Ponce retired from Chicago Tonight earlier this year after more than 30 years reporting, hosting and paneling for the show. The veteran says he is somewhere in the baseball idiom of “going, going and gone,” but not quite gone from the world of journalism. Ponce after all, is still lecturing on interviewing at the University of Loyola.

As a host, Ponce has been able to hold balanced conversations on politics and hold fire to the feet of guests who would rather not directly answer his questions. Ponce leaves behind what his colleagues call “a face” on the Mt. Rushmore of Chicago Tonight, interviewing notable guests such as then senatorial candidate Barack Obama, Elmo and Rita Moreno among others.

I reached out to Ponce, who now gets to enjoy his time off to be with his family, about objectivity in journalism; and how the lens of objectivity has changed over time. With objectivity, comes credibility, says Ponce. “If you’re perceived as non-objective, then I think you lose your main thing which gives you professional (credibility.)”

Ponce says that the opinion of a reporter should try to stray away on how they cover a story. “The focus should not be on the reporter the focus should be on the story the reporter is covering. If you are seen as a non-objective reporter, then all of a sudden, you’re no longer relevant.”

Ponce broke down the three things he did while at Chicago Tonight to make sure his reporting is free of bias. Doing the homework, being aware of your own biases, and having your work looked over.

Doing the homework

“I tried to understand a topic, so I know where (the) landmines are, in terms of where the different viewpoints lie, what the different arguments are,” said Ponce. Ponce says this has been able to help keep it balanced. I can only imagine how important it is to know “where the third rail is,” as he put it.

Being aware of your own biases

 “All of us have biases. We live in a culture that has biases in so many different areas… stereotypes about race and ethnicity, religion, social class,” said Ponce. “We’re not immune to the culture. We have downloaded biases and downloaded stereotypes and downloaded prejudices because that’s the nature of the culture.”

“And if anyone says, ‘Oh, I’m completely unbiased  and I don’t have any prejudices’ —-  I don’t buy that. We can’t help it, we live it, we are of this culture. The thing that’s important is to be aware of it, know when you’re wrong, and check yourself.”

Have your work looked over

 “One of the things we do at Chicago Tonight is we share our questions with who will produce the segment.”

“It’s a system that helps make sure that we’re balanced. It’s not a foolproof system, but it’s a pretty good system.”

Ponce was open to talk about a time where he felt that he was not fair enough. In a 2015 panel he did with then mayoral candidate Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, Ponce drew groans from the crowd when he began a line of questioning with Garcia about his son being involved in a street gang.

Ponce spoke to John Kass after the panel saying he “missed the mark” with the line of questions he had and told me he “went overboard” with it. He said he apologized on air for it and to Garcia as well. He said, “People are judged over the course of a career and there will be scar tissue along the way, but you’ll learn from it.”

“When you mess up, say you messed up. It’s not that hard,” said Ponce. “You can always do a follow up piece, or do an editorial note in retrospect, (say) we missed some points in yesterday’s article.”

Being mathematically objective may not be attaining, says Ponce. “But day in and day out, if you are attempting to do your job in a good faith way, I think you will be serving the profession and our audience as well.”

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