I was at a barbecue on the Fourth of July and started a conversation with a person who is successful in pharmaceutical sales. After hearing him talk about how successful he was, I asked him why he succeeds where others fail. His answer was quick: His mother had been deaf since he was young, so he’d needed to learn different, nonverbal ways of communicating, giving him an edge over his competition who were only capable of reading clients and conveying their thoughts in certain ways.

That conversation was brought back to earlier this week on our visit to the Smithsonian Channel, where David Royle, the Channel Executive Vice President, said that he entered his career thinking of himself as a journalist in a given medium, be it print, video, radio or now online. His shifting has shifted, however, to the point where he now thinks of himself as “a nonfiction storyteller.”

By labeling himself that way, Royle pays homage to his profession while also avoiding pigeonholing himself. In today’s media landscape, it is crucial to understand that people consume media in disparate manners. There are, for instance, still people who read the daily paper with their breakfast every morning. But there are also people who depend on the Huffington Post for their news, just as there are a few who turn to Jon Stewart for the latest scoop.

Royle also touched on something that I’ve been turning over in my head for a while: Journalists are little more than storytellers. We’re out here to relay a series of events in a compelling and accurate manner. In reality, we’re no different than Ernie Pyle hammering on his typewriter, Walter Cronkite sitting behind his desk or Woodward and Bernstein digging where they weren’t welcome. Journalism’s survived this far and has undergone several major medium shifts. We’re in the middle of another shirt and as long as we can see the forest (and our principles) for the trees, journalism will remain the same.

Only the method of delivery will change.

*Photo uploaded to Flickr by Krista76

I love our Tuesday night class with Steve Springer, from Voice of America. Each week we meet with Steve, since he’s the adjunct for our Semester in Washington summer program. I like his stories, his advice, and the fact that he opens up the floor for the rest of the class to share their thoughts, and sometimes, like last week, get into some pretty heated debates.

Last week’s topic: Michael Hastings’s article in Rolling Stone about General McChrystal.

There has been quite a stir over whether or not McChrystal should have given his real thoughts and opinions on top administration officials. There’s so much to talk about!  Did Hastings cross an ethical line?  Was the interview on or off the record?  Would you have published the article if you were Hastings? Was there something he should have done differently?  Was Obama right to relieve him of his duties?  The list goes on and on, and needless to say, two hours wasn’t long enough for everyone to share their many opinions.

I’m not going to get on my soapbox, but I think this would be a good topic to discuss further on some sort of message board.  I know there are already hundreds of threads out there, but I want to know: how do past, current, and future journalists feel about this issue?

Steve and Amos (The SIWJ program Director)both talked about their personal experiences similar to Michael Hastings’s situation, and it was interesting to hear how they would have handled it twenty years ago vs. how they would handle it today.  That’s something I find very valuable: the fact that we’re learning from someone who has done and still does this sort of stuff everyday of his life.  The information he’s giving us comes from his first hand experience doing exactly what a lot of us hope to do in a few years.  You can write all the textbooks you want, but I don’t think they can educate you on half of the stuff some of our guest speakers, not just Steve, have talked to us about.

From All the President’s Men, to Facebook issues, to Michael Hastings’s article that brought down Stanley McChrystal, to PR vs. advertising vs. journalism, class with Steve Springer is always entertaining.

*Photo uploaded to Flickr by The U.S Army