How special should we be as journalists ?

This week after my brief wading into P/R I'm going to return to my safety blanket of journalism.

So if you read my Lincolnite blog I'm going to warn you what's coming up is going to be spoilers.

This week I had to attend a public admin lecture in relation to my course options. Feeling to polite to leave after the talk had finished I stayed for the lecture and it highlighted another philosophical journalism rhetorical question which I'm going to have a partial attempt of answering.

'Is specialising in journalism more of a career hindrance ?'

Looking at the subject of employability and how journalists are supposed to be the guardians of truth shouldn't we through our net a wide as we can or are we spreading ourselves to thin ?

As a local reporter I'm not able to specialise in one subject look for example Jim Sterling who is solely a video game journalist (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/articles/Jim%20Sterling) or Gordon Smart an entertainment journalist for The Sun. When spreading your net out further could help with their reporting Jim Sterling recently did a piece about the ten worst video games and made a reference to the X-men game, if he had some knowledge about the comic franchise his criticisms could have been even further diverse. Though he did spread his net extremely wide when he reported on the SOPA act and as Christ Frost writes 'A good reporter is unavoidably linked with what society sees as important about journalism.'

As a local reporter I have to be as diverse as possible as my target audience is what could be considered the general public and have a huge variety of interests. This means I have to try and cater to them. Below I'm going to try and demonstrate this with the stories I plan to pitch for my Lincolnite meeting tomorrow and place each of them into a genre of news-

1. Kony coverage event- As a tie-in with the viral video concerning Joesph Kony I want  to report on the planned promotion event which is happening in April to see if it has the desired effect it outlined. Looking at this I think it could be placed in foreign politics because it revolves around  a debated controversy in another country

2. Finding the most interesting displays at the local museum- I propose the idea of going to the local history museum and compiling a list of the most interesting displays they have. I would place this story in the genre of history since I looking into in a sense the history of the city.

3. Bug wildlife- I've heard from friends their has been a bizarre shift in wildlife in the local area so I propose investigating to see if the shift in weather which is unnatural for this time of year has caused this. I would place this story in the genre of science/wildlife.

Here I'm covering a wide variety of stories. Though through writing this entry I've decided we should basically remember the standard ethical behaviour of a journalist in no matter what we cover and a specialist is useful but it's worth remembering to mindful of all news coverage. In a nutshell it's worth remembering Chris Frosts words 'We know that much is expected of us in terms of gathering the truth and presenting it to a public'