Posted by MidnightBlue on July 28, 2006, at 21:41:18
In reply to I think homophobia killed a newspaper story I did, posted by PhoenixGirl on July 28, 2006, at 18:21:36
Right or wrong, your boss probably knows the particular market for his paper better than you do as an intern. That doesn't mean you didn't have a good story or that you didn't write it well. It just means he didn't think it was a good article to publish in his paper.
If you find yourself in conflict with what the paper publishes and its policies, you should look elsewhere for a job. You would probably be a lot happier.
MidnightBlue
> I'm interning at a mid-sized paper in south Georgia. I spent a lot of time and effort on a story about an HIV positive man who used to smoke crack and prostitute himself. I wrote it as a cautionary tale and to show readers that this kind of thing does happen in the Bible Belt.
> My editor said the story didn't have enough sources and statistics. Yes, the story was imperfect, but we print imperfect stories in the paper every day.
> However.....The editor said I "picked the wrong person" to profile. He said something like, "We did a story a while ago about a woman who got HIV from her husband. But this guy was smoking crack and everything. Why did you pick him?" I said because people not being careful about sex and then getting HIV is more common than 100% victims who did nothing risky, like the married woman we wrote about.
> He also said stuff like "This is a difficult market for a story like this." More than once he referred to "this market". He said some readers will wonder why we would print this story and not one about anti-homosexual activists.
> And just for background: This editor did not want to send one of our reporters to Iraq because the reporter was a woman. He also did not want to put a picture in the paper of women dancing in "hooker boots", even though the women's bodies weren't exposed.
> I really think the editor doesn't like gay people and thinks people like the man I wrote about deserve what they get.
> My story is probably not going to be published. The irony is that part of the story is about the stigma the gay man has had to face.
>
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poster:MidnightBlue
thread:671528
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060728/msgs/671600.html