So today I was presented with one of the most incredible experiences of my life; being recruited to ask the legendary Mark Potts a question during one of our evening sessions.
For each speaker, three students are selected to start the question portion of the lecture. This afternoon, I begged Fate, God, Allah, and Buddha to let one of those three people be me. “Recovering Journalist” is one of my favorite blogs so this was kind of a big deal for me…
For those of you not fortunate enough to know of Mr. Mark Potts, he is a very prominent journalist who began working for the Washington Post about 15 years ago. He also contributed to the Chicago Tribune for some time, and was a co-creator of Backfence.com . He now runs his own blog site called Recoveringjournalist.com. I highly recommend it for a humorous, witty, and insightful look into our government and media.
So I got to ask my question (will post @ bottom–kind of long) and got to hear his answer. Anyway, me being the ever star-struck foolish girl that I am, just had to get Mr. Potts to sign my notebook.
I will be having that page framed and mounted in my room.
My question to Mark Potts–
I one of your blogs, “A Crossed-Up Acrostic Fan”, you adressed the fact that the public isn’t very interested in what most journalists would consider newsworthy, but instead in celebrity scandals and “changes in their t.v. schedules”. With your extensive knowledge and background, how would you propose we as the future reporters of the world either help turn Americans away from this trend and give them information they need, or do we just appease the masses and give them what they want?