The importance of a good conversation seems to be lost on many lately.
With so many ways to communicate, and the ease of typing a text or email, we sometimes forget to speak to one another.
This seems to be especially noticeable in the community journalism landscape. Our local journalists are expected and required to ask questions – sometimes those questions are fairly easy, and they come about through casual conversation. But there are many situations where the conversations can be tough, they can be uncomfortable for both the journalist and the person being interviewed, but this does not mean the conversations shouldn’t happen.
Prepared statements from sources seem to be an alternative for many. From elected officials to non-profits and municipal governments, many sources opt to respond to requests from journalists with typed out, pre-thought statements.
While prepared statements can be efficient, and they do in fact provide a lot of the basic facts journalists seek, they are often lacking the extras – the things that provide more context, a deeper look at an issue, and perhaps details that the interviewee is purposely or not-purposely trying to leave out.
It is understandable that in a world filled with so much information – both accurate and inaccurate – people seek a way to control the message, making sure the numbers are exact, and the facts are right.
But somewhere along the way, we lose that human touch. We start to sound like broken records - and like some of these statements may even have had the help of artificial intelligence to write them.
As a society, we need to get back to real, human conversation before we lose the ability to properly communicate in a word that is filled with limitless modes of communication.
J.H.
