Revisions
Carol Fletcher
Assistant Professor
Department of Journalism and Mass Media Studies
Hofstra University
E-mail: carol.t.fletcher@hofstra.edu
It's Sunday night, never a good time for us. The police have left, tempers are cooling, and even the dog has settled down in front of the TV. Then the doorbell rings.
At 9 p.m., I'm guessing it is my daughter's boyfriend. But when I open the front door, there, shivering in the snow in high-heeled boots and no jacket, is my former journalism student.
Shoot, I'd forgotten about the interview.
Karen is writing a profile of me for her intermediate reporting course. It's a routine assignment designed to teach students the rudiments of background checks. Three weeks ago, she asked to see my driver's license. She wrote down the number and checked my driving record. She also looked up my property tax records online. I saw her in the halls one afternoon and she asked why I owned so many homes. I was confused, then figured out how she must have made the error: No, no, I laughed, there is just one home, but I re-financed several times.
Karen is from Morocco. She has a French accent and a French boyfriend. She seems perpetually to have just gotten off a transcontinental flight that arrived three days late. So it's no surprise that it was almost Christmas vacation before she asked me for an interview to complete the profile. I invited her to the house, thinking it would be good for my kids to meet a young person different from the teens in our own sanitized suburb.
"Karen, this is my daughter, Jenn. Jenn, Karen." My daughter half smiles and retreats into her room of smashed walls and broken CDs.
I ask Karen if she'd like to do the interview in the living room, where my husband is building a fire, but she would prefer a table to lean on while she takes notes. In the kitchen, she carefully spreads out her scribbled questions and opens her reporter's notebook. My seven-year-old arrives, asking for cocoa. As I open the cocoa packages into mugs of milk and put them in the microwave, I notice Karen taking notes on my décor -- the Christmas tree with its hodgepodge of ornaments, the cards on the mantle, the menorah on the Formica counter. In Morocco, she tells me, her family had to practice Judaism secretly; she is thrilled by the trimmings of holiday celebration.
I hand my son his cocoa and place a cup before Karen.
She reads from her prepared questions.
"Where did you grow up?"
"Lafayette, Indiana," I say. She asks me to spell Lafayette.
"How did you meet your husband?"
"Twenty years ago I was writing a story on laser eye surgery," I tell her, "and I remembered that an old college buddy of mine had become an ophthalmologist. I called him for an interview, and while I was on the phone, asked him to introduce me to the cutest guy in his residency program."
"Is that good journalistic ethics?" my husband asks, smiling. He's been listening in the next room and comes in to join in the reminiscing.
Karen doesn't smile, but says, "Oh, good, Mr. Fletcher... I have a question for you." She consults her notes.
"What did you think about your wife when you first met her?"
"I thought she was the smartest woman I ever met."
I shoot him a look of gratitude. Karen doesn't see. She is busy writing out answers. We wait for her to finish.
"And you have three children?"
"Yes," I say. "You met Jenn and Ryan. And we have another teenager, Matt, who's at a friend's." Hopefully.
My husband adds, "And we lost a daughter to cancer six years ago."
Six years ago? Gee, that's right, I think. For awhile after Katie's death, the pain was so acute that nothing else registered. But at least it was focused; you knew for sure what you were sad about. Over the years, the grief dissolved into a diffuse sorrow that seeped imperceptibly into the fabric of everyday life. Our youngest child is afraid to fall asleep alone. Did Katie's death do that or our own parenting failures? One of our teenagers is sullen. The other crashes fists through walls and screams so loud the police arrive. Where does that anger come from? Katie's death? An inherited psychiatric problem? Or just, as one police officer suggested, a spoiled kid? My husband accuses me of being too lenient. I blame him for his temper. An army of social workers and psychologists can't seem to put this family back together again. Is that Katie?
I pull my thoughts back to my student, who is awkwardly deciding how to proceed. She takes refuge in her prepared questions.
"And how did you decide to become a professor?"
And so it goes, for the next half hour, Karen reading questions, my husband and I answering and then waiting as she catches up with her notes.
Finally, she thanks us and takes out her car keys. As I open the front door for her, cold air and snow rush in. Just then, Jenn thumps down the stairs.
"Do you want to borrow a jacket?" she surprises me by asking Karen.
Karen declines, thanks us all again, and leaves.
A week later, a fellow journalism professor drops by my office and throws a copy of Karen's profile on my desk. "She did a good job," he says.
I start to read about the "strangers" who go by mine and my husband's names. The warmth of their fire on a December day, the cocoa and homemade Christmas decorations, the adoring husband, and the thoughtful teen. Her profile concludes: "This is a family who has stuck together despite the worst of tragedies."
And I wonder: if our journalism students can get such a simple assignment so wrong, how do we expect them to go out and cover a complex world?
And then I think: maybe, just maybe, she didn't get it wrong at all.
Academic Exchange Extra invites reader responses to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.
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Citation Reference: AE-Extra. Available Online. [URL: < >. Created: 16 November 2004. Updated: --. Accessed: ] |