Reading Response 4

This week's reading talked a lot about verifying information. With the development of technology, we get used to getting news from Internet. However, the authors of News Reporting and writing reminded us that good reporters don't simply pick up and use materials from other websites. They will verify the sources and find experts they need to interview. We must be very cautious when we use materials from websites like wikipedia and yahoo answers.

Another thing is how to find the news in news releases. I think most of  the news releases are very boring. It's really not easy to find something interesting and worthy to write if you don't know much background of those news release.  Maybe that's the reason that news companies prefer to hire reporters who know very well in a certain area.

The Elements of Journalism talked about investigative news. It is really an exciting process to write an investigative story. And many journalists won the Pulitzer Prize because of  investigative news. But in the meantime, writing investigative news means huge risks. Several investigative journalists died each year because of their reportage.  I remembered that one investigative journalist from my internship company always wore sunglasses and respirator because some people wanted to kill him because of his reportage.

When writing an investigative story,  it is very important to serve as independent monitors especially if the story related to some anyone's benefits.We must make sure that no one takes advantages of us if we want to expose something. Recording is necessary when we interview deep throats. And we also need to verify everything from different sources and try to keep balance.