A regular Source feature, Undercurrents slips below the surface of Virgin Islands daily routines and assumptions to explore the beauty, the mystery, the murky and the disregarded in a bid to get to know the community more deeply.
The election night flack over restricted access to observe vote-counting raises a question: Is it practicable to have one member of the press represent the whole of “the media,” as the Elections Board proposed on St. Croix? And further, how can a group of people trained to compete with one another be expected to cooperate with one another?
Some 30 years ago, a lot of the reporters working for various news outlets in the Virgin Islands decided to form the V.I. Press Association. The move was spurred by concerns over government attempts to control access to information and fears that actual censorship may lie just around the corner. The group lasted long enough to address immediate problems, but didn’t survive more than two or three years once the common cause had shriveled. Since then, there’s been an attempt or two at establishing another association, but nothing has stuck.
Meanwhile technology and other forces have altered the practice of journalism across the world and no less so in the territory. So it seems worth taking a look at the state of “the media” in the Virgin Islands today.
Interestingly, several people who work in or with news organizations who were contacted for this article chose not to share their views.
Others were generous with their time and observations.
They didn’t speak with one voice, but there was enough overlap to note some trends. News outlets are operating on increasingly tighter budgets, spending less and less on personnel, and relying more and more on press releases, wire services and each other rather than digging out and developing news stories themselves.
“Friendly news” is replacing hard news as the public’s appetite for entertainment increases. And the rise of digital media is producing more data, though perhaps no more understanding. But the concept that gathering and disseminating news is an important service – not just a business – is alive and well.
Motivation
“The Virgin Islands has a deep, rich history of journalism going all the way back to D. Hamilton Jackson,” said Judi Shimel, who has been an active part of that legacy for well more than 20 years. Currently a St. Thomas-St. John reporter for the St. Croix Avis, she already had several years experience stateside when she moved to St. John in 1990 and has worked for most of the major news outlets here at one time or another, as well as acting as a stringer for international organizations.
“As reporters we perform a public service, but we are not public servants,” Shimel said. “When we do a good job, we contribute to the public discourse. . . Ours is not a profession. Ours is a vocation.”
For Alex Randall, the “Good News Guy” of WSTA Radio and who also teaches journalism at the University of the Virgin Islands, “It’s all about serving the people.”
“If you can get information into people’s hands, they can make decisions to improve their lives,” Randall said.
That information is sometimes in the form of an exposé but often is more mundane.
“It’s important to speak truth to power,” said Bill Kossler, who joined the Source in 2007 and works as a reporter and editor. However, “it’s important not to be gratuitously accusatory when there’s no reason to be.”
“I get tired of fake scandals,” he added.
Kossler sees a news outlet as a conduit to provide people with information that they will find interesting and useful in their daily lives. “We need to speak to the whole community, not just our own interests.”
Method
How do you get the information to disseminate?
On the one hand, Randall said, “We’re way better than we used to be” in gathering information because the Internet, email and other technology “has leveled the playing field” and made data highly accessible.
But the trade-off is a lack of depth and the abdication of old-fashioned news gathering.
News outlets tend to respond to press releases rather than initiating stories, Randall said. “Ferreting out a story is hard to do.”
“There are no news people at most of the radio stations” anymore, he said. “Everybody has bailed out of the news business. It’s too expensive.” Because they are short-staffed, Randall added, almost all reporting is driven by press releases. “Well, that’s ludicrous.”
Sandra Goomansingh, news director at CBS affiliate TV 2, knows the pressure of limited resources very well. When she started as a reporter at the station 12 years ago, it had a relatively large staff of its own and could occasionally call on reporters from the Daily News – at that time, owned by the same company – to augment the broadcast.
That affiliation is long gone, and the staff has been shrinking. In January, it was reduced even further so that now there are just two full-time reporters on St. Thomas and two on St. Croix. News occurs 24/7, and real people have to have breaks, so in reality, she said, there’s never more than three people in the field – unless you count Goomansingh, who now acts both as news director, anchor and part-time reporter.
“You have to multi-task even more,” she said. “Since January, I’ve been news director and I’ve only taken one day off for the year.”
Even on days she does no reporting, her schedule is full. It includes a morning meeting with reporters to decide on assignments, reviewing local press releases, monitoring other media and coming up with local story ideas, as well as keeping track of national reports via television, Internet and the CBS feed, putting together a promo for each day’s broadcast, which she posts on Facebook and on Channel 2’s affiliate channels, meeting with production staff to go over graphics and finally taping the show at 6:30 to run at 7 p.m. If the staff can’t meet the 6:30 taping deadline, then the show goes live at 7.
Goomansingh added, “I think the role of the media is to get the information out as soon as possible and as accurately as possible.”
Continued next week: Competition vs. Cooperation.
