Not Dreams, Just Survive And How That Netted A Global Award In Journalism.
Pursue your dreams, follow your passions, but what if you’re just trying to survive? There’s no sugar coating that as a business meme framed by inspiring words, “you’ve got this”, because the cause and effect is so individualistic, so personal.
Imagine this. You grow up moving from one foster care parent to another. Then get whisked away by one of your parents to Ghana at a time when it’s riven with coups and hardship. On your return to the UK almost a decade later you have no idea of a career and especially one demanded by your father, which causes a 15-year rift.
Now you’re stuck, so you turn your hand to journalism because your view of the world is real, but one you do not see in the media. Few will hire you because, well, there’s the obvious and then there’s several unwritten codes that frame journalism. But you catch some lucky breaks here and there e.g. BBC Newsnight and ride your luck.
Journalism doesn’t tell you about the “squeezed middle.” But the UK is awash with us. You join, do the leg work, get some stripes, but then you’re discharged, otherwise you leave yourself for a multitude of external reasons. New journos join and the cycle continues. Relatively few Black and Brown people breach the strata that connects to management and decision making — the squeezed middle.
So at some point you think I’ll re-imagine what journalism will or should be by building it. There’s this quadruple consciousness that guides you. You’re Black, you’re British, you’re global and you’re Ghanaian (your mum’s part German).
It’s a mad daft idea, but you do. Many do so too.
Astonishingly, this wins one of the most coveted global awards in journalism innovation, the Knight Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism. For an idea of the insanity of what you’ve done your entry combining high tech and diverse stories beats the BBC, CNN. Newsweek and more.
Former Pulitzer prize winners who are judging say what you’ve done “foreshadows the future of the web.”
It featured interviews with Quincy Jones in Soweto (South Africa) and James Woolsey in Washington DC at a time when his organisation was recruiting Black and Brown grads from universities.
You create and code gamification in news — an interactive interview with the Head of Television News at the time Peter Horrocks. Interviewers around the world put questions to him.
You learn to code and design an interactive website that should also work in public places. You call it the Outernet and predict in a decade’s time ( its 2005 remember, there’s no YouTube yet) everyone will be streaming.
It draws chuckles from some, but Apple gets wind of it, and feature you on their website. Actually, because they learn you were mad enough to board a plane to New York, just to buy a Powerbook Mac and come back home and still save 500UKP.
There’s no ten point plan for this happening, because this instinct was born out of survival and necessity. That drive comes from the “hustle and flow” of absence. You’ve never missed what you’ve never had, but strive for any positive experience, which is why packaged solutions, “follow your passion” don’t feel connecting.
Today, social media has made us all selfishly conscious of coveting what a stranger has. Absences are seen as artificial. Now we all see this as a negative experience. Absences are for the weak.
At some point the “hustle and flow” will ensure you meet your absence self (when you had nothing) on a dusty no-street-sign crossroad for an untimely chat. We were all once invincible, became high performing people you’ll tell the other, but now, just now, you seek to rebalance. The trick, which can often be missed, is to know when the balance between your two selves requires you to shift perspectives, says my meditation teacher.
In the last couple of months, I’ve taken up “conscious connected breathing”. Twenty to forty minutes of deep belly breathing. Breathing? Yes Breathing! I scuba dive, so I have some experience in slow breathing, but oh no, this is way different. The science behind it deep, if not easily dismissed. I was told if you have any memories of trauma, stress, anything, be prepared for an experience like no other. Many people openly become saddened, even weep, and then a feeling of calm descends upon them. Deep calm.
The story of the boy who became a journalist was a latent memory, but resurfaced because this year is the anniversary of that crazy mad time that led to me standing in front of an audience at the National Press Club in Washington DC. One judge Mark Hinojosa, part of Kansas City Star team that won a Pulitzer for local reporting, became a friend. We laughed so much when we spoke and prodded oour backgrounds. I’m reminded of him, his caring attention, and his untimely passing.
Mark loved to teach as do I. Today I’’m remembering a future of journalism. The one that has come to be, and the one that hasn’t yet and that which sparked it was just wanting to survive. FULLER STORY HERE ON Viewmagazine.tv
Thanks to Jon and Rob for helping make this.
