Manifesto

Away from the spotlight, the reporting profession has become a virtual rust belt industry in the US, Australia, and other developed nations, with its economics savaged by digital proliferation. The press' skeleton crews too often can do little more than fling shrunken, simplistic, fodder at fickle, distracted audiences.

Yet, while news-pages shrivel, the world and human nature have grown no less complex and we remain in great need of professional writers and documentary makers with curiosity and endurance enough to roam with minds open, to immerse themselves, to be confused and afraid and hurt and thrilled and informed, to lose their minds and change their minds, and finally to bear witness.

And then to do it again. All of which is time consuming, expensive, personally demanding, and requires constant self-reflection. There are easier ways not to make a living.

This manifesto is for those who hear the call. 

Preparation

1) Know that you will be despised and opposed
2) Train in self defense and first aid
3) Pursue a wide range of experience
4) Accept damage
5) Open your senses
6) Learn to listen
7) Read widely, deeply and actively
8) Compare what you read and are taught with what you witness and experience
9) Become self sufficient
10) Dismiss materialism and accept relative poverty
11) Open to the fullness of love and death
12) Recognize your sentimentalism

In the field

13) Do not be an activist
14) Do not confuse a smart phone with life
15) Avoid other journalists
16) Eliminate your sentimentalism
17) Assume you are ignorant
18) Suspend moral judgement
19) Allow boredom
20) Listen to, and synchronize with, the local tempo
21) Get out of your accommodation
22) Join your subjects in their intoxicants (unless it's meth, fetty, tranq, etc)
23) Open yourself to your subjects
24) Rather than settling for talking, experience as much as you can with your subjects
25) Learn to listen
26) Risk yourself as you ask others to risk for you
27) Open yourself to the unexpressed
28) Do everything as cheaply as good manners allow
29) Outstay your prejudices

Writing

30) Steel yourself against formula
31) Tell the truth
32) Tell your ignorance
33) Leave conclusions to the reader