Am I allowed to be human?

As I mentioned last week, I've migrated all our Spryfield news to Outside the Circle (and if you're here seeking local news, please visit our new site. Read, enjoy, and help me make it better!). So Chebucto West is back where it started.

The thing that confronts me now is: where on earth is that? How do I comment on the news that I'm delivering elsewhere? Wouldn't that be breaking the number one rule of "objective" journalism?

To give you an example, last week I was researching a story and found that the situation behind it was more complicated than I'd imagined. I doubted myself and my ability to tell that story clearly. In short, I was scared of the story. I was in a period of self-doubt. I get them...everybody does. Part of being human.

I took a walk to the frozen lake, sat on a rock, thought about life a bit. Then I came home and wrote a draft for this blog where I talked at length about my fears and wondered aloud if I could hand this story off to somebody with more experience than I.

I'm going ahead with the story, but I didn't publish that blog post. A voice in the back of my head said, "If you put this up there and later publish the story, could this self-doubt cause people to question the quality of your reporting?" Once you put something up on the Internet, it's there for anyone to see, even if you remove it later.

Last fall, Washington Post managing editor Raju Narisetti closed his Twitter account. On the Post's Ombudsman blog, Andrew Alexander wrote, "In today’s hyper-sensitive political environment, Narisetti’s tweets could be seen as one of The Post’s top editors taking sides."

Not everybody thought this was a great decision. Brent Baker at Newsbusters.org snorted, "So much for speaking truth to power!" MG Siegler at TechCrunch wrote, "How deep does that rabbit hole go? Maybe those journalists should also refrain from stating their opinions at dinner parties. Maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to laugh at Michael Moore’s new movie when it comes out. Actually, they probably shouldn’t even be allowed to see it...Hell, they should really just disconnect their computers from the Internet. And maybe stop leaving the office. Also, they should probably just stop having opinions."

The question which came up last week in my own life has more to do with my perceived competence than my perceived opinion, but it's not such a stretch to say that my problems come from the same root as Raju Narisetti's.

In a March 11 editorial, the Vancouver Observer suggested some sensible guidelines, which basically boil down to, "think before you post."

I try to do this every time. Maybe sometimes I don't think hard enough, but I try. And as you can see, I did decide to expose some of my self-doubts to you, because I think that I am allowed to be human. Everybody already knows that I'm human, that I hold certain opinions about certain things, and that I can fail.


To be continued...