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    Kneading Journalism
    Kneading Journalism
    Kneading Journalism
    Ebook155 pages1 hour

    Kneading Journalism

    By Tony Ganzer

    ()

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    About this ebook

    "Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required."

     

    By the time a photographer spotted these words on a shirt at a campaign rally for Donald Trump in November 2016, it had long been clear that a growing number of Americans had not-so-subtle reservations about journalists. In an age that some demonize the media as an "enemy of the people," it's time for a heart-to-heart about what journalism is, and what it could be. And while we break down the news business, let's also bake some bread.

     

    In Kneading Journalism, award-winning international journalist Tony Ganzer provides an insider's view of the Fourth Estate through compelling personal narratives and keen insights. Essays transport the reader from a bread riot before the French Revolution, to the inside of Germany's public media and bread industries, to the streets of post-revolutionary Cairo, all while exploring the who, what, and why of journalism.

     

    Kneading Journalism provides readers bite-sized thoughts on journalism and society, and basic bread recipes for any level of baker.

     

    Before we can break bread, we need to bake bread.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCherry Mountain Media
    Release dateMar 17, 2023
    ISBN9798987365212
    Kneading Journalism
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      Book preview

      Kneading Journalism - Tony Ganzer

      1 Defining journalism with a bread rebellion

      It seemed a recipe for disaster. A neighborhood woman in the Paris suburb of Saint-Antoine looked to buy a 4-pound loaf of bis-blanc, an average mixed bread of white and wheat flour, for a price of 12 sous. The price she offered wasn’t unreasonable by market standards, but the baker manning the store wasn’t interested in haggling. He priced the loaf at either 13 or 14 sous (depending on who you ask) and wouldn’t budge.

      Since you won’t give me a bread for my money, I’ll have it for nothing, the woman yelled, as she snatched the loaf and made for the door.

      Tensions between French bread buyers and bakers had reached a fever pitch by July 1725. A poor grain harvest strangled supply across the country, including in Saint-Antoine. Soaring bread prices, hunger, and frustration over the situation would erupt in violence that could be considered a foretaste of the revolution to come more than six decades later.

      The woman’s attempted theft — she gave the bread back after a confrontation — ended in her throwing rocks at the bakery, supported by an increasingly agitated crowd, which the authorities had to break up. But this wasn’t an isolated incident. It might be seen as foreshadowing another loaf theft and full-scale riot just weeks later; an act of rebellion and protest against the ruling class, and against powerful bakery owners like Louise Chaudron, a widow.

      Chaudron’s operation used twice as much wheat as the average baker, and provided about double the average amount of bread to the markets. In an attempt to maximize profits, Chaudron apparently conspired with other bakers to raise bread prices out of proportion with grain prices. That was at least an accusation against her, as hungry and frustrated crowds rallied around the bread thief.

      Since you won’t give me a bread for my money, I’ll have it for nothing.

      Chaudron’s affluence, and reputation as a rogue baker among some commoners, attracted the protests to her shop. The tensions may have been fueled by the results of a police raid on Chaudron’s bread market stall a month before, when investigators discovered unmarked and underweight loaves.

      Even more than it does now, bread in the 18th century fueled French society before, through, and after its revolution. Bread today is still a staple of French society and identity to a degree, but in the time of the Ancien Régime (Old Regime) access to bread equated very much to access to life, especially for the underclass ruled by Louis XV.

      We know about Chaudron, and the theft of a loaf of bis-blanc because of a collection of documentation including police reports, and witness statements from the time, filed in national archives, brought to life by history (and bread) scholars like Cornell’s Steven Laurence Kaplan, who pieced together the drama of Saint-Antoine. Journalism, as we know it today, didn’t really exist yet — elements of contemporary journalism, yes, but not the craft as you might think of it. The police and royal guards can tell us that many in the mob were beggars, or that they took 600 to 900 pounds of bread from Chaudron alone. Select details of the situation might have appeared in almanacs, newsletters, or personal journals.

      But this information isn’t contained in a form necessarily meant for the masses, and not meant to help empower the masses with knowledge.

      There wasn’t a true freedom of expression or freedom of the press under the Old Regime. Writing in papers or pamphlets tended to be literary in nature, or of science and the arts. Political writing — and discontent — stayed mostly underground. A new kind of journalism, as something closer to what we might recognize, would soon appear on the horizon, in many forms.

      Journalism contains multitudes

      Sometimes the simplest questions are the most difficult to answer, and What is journalism? is no exception. It seems that most people have an idea of what the characteristics of journalism are, and what they think it should look like or sound like, but a simple and clear definition can be tough. Definitions and attitudes about what is acceptable or not can shift depending on your viewpoint.

      A natural place to look for a formal definition is the dictionary. Merriam-Webster’s defines journalism as:

      1.

      (a): the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media

      (b): the public press

      (c): an academic study concerned with the collection and editing of news or the management of a news medium

      2.

      (a): writing designed for publication in a newspaper or magazine

      (b): writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation

      (c): writing designed to appeal to current popular taste or public interest

      This definition is a good effort, but might be troublesome.

      Take for instance the first definition: the collection and editing of news for presentation through media. But what media? Does that matter? Is a blogger always committing an act of journalism if he or she collects news of any kind? (We’ll talk more about who is a journalist, including bloggers, and who is committing acts of journalism in Chapter 3.)

      Definition 2(b) is also on shaky ground. If journalism is presenting facts without an attempt at interpretation then where does news analysis fall on the spectrum of a journalist’s skill set? Or in an investigative report, at the point where a journalist explains what the trail of facts shows, or a data set illuminates, is that not journalism because it interprets what has been learned?

      Maybe this is intentional nitpicking at the language around journalism after a noble attempt by a dictionary, but I do it only to show that the issue can get murky when trying to reach the essence of journalism.

      The American Press Institute defines it as an activity, and what comes from the activity. Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. It is also the product of these activities. And the value of that journalism flows from its purpose to provide people with verified information they can use to make better decisions, and its practices, the most important of which is a systematic process…that journalists use to find not just the facts, but also the truth about the facts."

      This is a solid definition of journalism. But we need to keep in mind how messy the world is, and that mess is represented by many perspectives on how to do journalism, and how to rate the quality of the final product. Alan Rusbridger, a former editor-in-chief of The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. summed up the problem in an

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