A Minute Before Friday

As much as I want to make this next piece a little less about The Elements of Journalism and a little more about the item I’m actually reviewing, I can’t deny that Jo Kadlecek’s A Minute Before Friday is an ideal companion to Kovach and Rosenstiel’s text.

K&R have a thorough and valuable philosophy of journalism between the covers of their book, but what good is theory if it cannot be applied? Kadlecek’s novel celebrates K&R’s philosophy in a way that is practical and entertaining.

Minute provides great insight on the discipline of verification. I will be brief in this section, as my review of All the President’s Men addresses this topic thoroughly. Suffice to say that Jonna Lightfoot MacLaughlin’s persistence in chasing the story down dead end after dead end embodies the discipline as K&R envisioned it.

Jonna might be flawed – she can’t pull it together and quit smoking, she can be a real space case at times, and her sense of style is nothing short of hopeless – but if there’s one thing she’s got right, it’s her dedication to the truth. Fledgling and jaded journalists alike should follow her example.

Minute also shows how journalism can fulfill its watchdog duty. In their top ten elements of journalism, K&R include “Journalists must serve as an independent monitor of power.” Jonna learns that the Ivy League school Regal University is laundering money and immediately recognizes the story’s importance.

It’s bigger than her friend/love interest David Rockley’s job, which he lost for investigating these claims. It’s bigger than her own job at the Clarion, which she risks by pursuing the story even after her editor urges her to kill it. It’s bigger than her reputation, which she jeopardizes every time she chases down an informant who has already refused to inform her.

But most importantly, Minute confirms K&R’s fears that “independent journalism may be dissolved in the solvent of commercial communication and synergistic self-promotion: corporatism.” This is precisely the process that begins at the Clarion when Walter Wood arrives from the media firm and takes over.

Jonna’s roommate and coworker Hannah X. Hensley, an even more principled and prodigious reporter than Jonna, is furious when Wood tells her, “The more colorful your stories become, the more likely New Yorkers will pick up the Clarion.”

“The only thing he cares about are dollars, not news,” she rants. Sadly this is the state of affairs in many newsrooms today, whether the medium is print or television. What our culture craves is not news but entertainment. If it’s not sensationalized, no one wants to read or watch it, and therefore no one in news wants to run or air it.

Reporters and news people like Jonna and Hannah exist, but they seem to be few in number. Therefore we must take it upon ourselves to be the kind of journalists we ourselves would trust to tell a story. As Jonna told her subway worker friend, Emma, "There are some big mountains to tackle." But as Emma told Jonna in reply, "That's why you're there. . . . This city needs you."