Local News

When you are to write about a piece of news or an opinion, you tend to think globally. I mean, the hot discussions on politics among common people are almost 100% about global topics. However, news and news journalist should forget about general pictures and focus on the real important aspect: extract information by asking questions. This is what guarantees our right to be informed. And it applies chiefly to local news, the ugly sister of the hot "global".

Tonight, I read a couple of pieces of news in the Evening Standard, tremendously flawed from a journalist point of view, in my opinion. The first is the front-page coverage of the Court investigation of the dead of Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper seller, during the G20 protests in April 2009 (the chronicle is by Paul Cheston). It is the crystalline example of a very poor job. In the best of the case, it looks like the guy showed up in Court, sat down, jot down a few notes and then, copied them as much as possible to fill space.

But the fundamental questions remain: 1) how a newspaper who supposedly is going home, not interested in the protests, ended up at the front line of the disturbs and gets hit? 2) how a man being hit with a baton in his legs and then pushed to the ground, after being helped by passers-by (?), walks 100 yards and then collapse to the ground and die shortly afterwards? 3) why a man, not interested in the protests, when asked if he needed an ambulance, answered: "No, they got me, the f***ers got me"?

If you are a news writer and you don't address and solve these questions, tell me, what use are you of?

The second piece of news, as much confusing and mediocre as the previous one (again, it is mediocre because it only collects in a chaotic way the general, available, official, opened knowledge -or no-knowledge- with no inquires, no worries, no purpose), is the sad finding of the body of Yen Zhen Anthony Soh in the Serpentine in Hyde Park. He was only a boy, 18, first-year Mechanical Engineering student in the Imperial College. Actually, about a week and a half, an email in my UCL box told about the missing boy and asked us to provide any information we could have.

You can ask "what is that you know about journalism?" I know nothing. I just like talking and have an opinion. If I am wrong I will be happy to think of an alternative manner.

I don't know. The world needs people who are not only concern with doing their jobs, not even doing their jobs well, but getting involved and passionated... And hurt. Truth and virtue deserve it.

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