In journalism there are various versions of this conversation. When it is my turn to bore the up-and-coming generation, my lament generally turns on the "loss of perspective diversity." I will talk about visiting my father’s newspaper in the 1960s and early 1970s. The police reporter only took that job because he was too short to be a cop. The education reporter Ğ among the few with a university degree - was no longer teaching due to alcoholism. The farm reporter had once owned a farm, now bankrupt. And the courts reporter was actually the postman. His "real" job involved delivering mail for the U.S. Postal Service, a position that implied security and a pension - not likely in the news business.
This was hardly a polished bunch at first glance. But I remember the conversations and the arguments in the lunch room. Who was responsible for the "Tet Offensive" being waged by North Vietnam against the American troops? Was the civil rights movement, then led by President Lyndon Johnson, moving too fast or too slow? Everybody had an opinion on the national curriculum reform known as "New Math." And they all brought this diverse life experience, a potpourri of political views and a host of strongly-held ideas into the making of the newspaper. I had the chance to briefly visit this newspaper almost 40 years later. The gender and ethnic mix had improved, something I applaud, but the perspective diversity had vanished. All had fine educations. All had read the same book last month and watched the same TV show the night before. And they all agreed on everything. And the newspaper they were producing was downright dull.
In a nutshell, that’s my lament. Which has been a topic on my mind all week, in the wake of our story in Tuesday’s Daily News, one you did not read anywhere else in the Turkish news media. It was first class journalism throughout. But what really tickled my editor’s heart was the disclosure at the very end: "Taylan Bilgiç, Mustafa Akyol and Reeta Paakkinen in Istanbul and Serkan Demirtaş and Göksel Bozkurt in Ankara contributed to this report." Five reporters, one story. Sometimes that’s what it takes. In case you missed it, their work was a detailed report on the government’s pending plan (a good one we later editorialized) to issue non-interest or "Islamic" bonds as one of the tools to woo new investment. We not only managed to talk to State Minister Mehmet Şimsek and senior officials about this, we also examined such financial instruments as an international phenomenon. We explained the religious reasoning behind so-called "sukuk" and we also compared this with similar investment tools in the United States and Europe, including so-called "Christian funds" which eschew companies involved in abortion, contraception or pornography. This is a complex and sensitive topic. It also a difficult story and involved a lot of work. But we were able to bring this to our readers because we have something similar - if a bit more sophisticated - to that atmosphere I experienced as a child in a newspaper lunchroom circa 1967.
Mustafa, as readers of his column know, is a serious and observant Muslim, now working on a book on the topic. After deadline, I have found myself in more than one argument with Mustafa about the theory of evolution. He is a committed "creationist" which many of us here would dismiss as a little nutty. Taylan, who runs our business section, learned all about economics in his 10 years at Istanbul’s Marxist daily Evrensel before I hired him away. As I argue with Mustafa about the earth being more than 6,000 years old, Taylan and I occasionally square off over Joseph Stalin. I argue Stalin was a monster, Taylan insists he has merely been misunderstood. Mustafa finished the international relations faculty of Boğaziçi University. Taylan dropped out of law school before getting a degree. Reeta brings a unique perspective to the newsroom. Nominally Finnish, we just think of her as the Finnish, Swedish, Russian, Greek and Turkish-speaking blond woman with the master’s from the London School of Economics and the black belt in news she earned at London’s Financial Times before deciding she’d rather live in Istanbul.
Serkan, our bureau chief in Ankara, is an odd one to lead a team of English-writing reporters. That’s because his first "second" language is actually French, a long story. A sociology graduate of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University, he worked at dailies Cumhuriyet and Radikal before crossing the street to our neighborhood. Göksel, our parliamentary bureau chief, would probably prefer climbing mountains to chasing down politicians for a living. For that’s what he does in his spare time. He, like Taylan, left the university short of a degree because he was already working full time as a newspaperman before he was old enough to vote. He served at Hürriyet, Günaydın, Birgün and Star before joining us five years ago. Is this a diverse bunch? You bet it is. They argue, they bicker and they challenge one another and their editor too. I am quite sure they did not all read the same book last month or watch the same TV program last night. But their friendships could not be faster nor their professionalism more admirable. And when it all comes together, they work like a team of surgeons or the dancers in a ballet, supporting, balancing and complimenting one another’s unique strengths and skills.
This is only an ideal at many a newspaper. At the Daily News, it is our routine.
