Oregon Humanities

Wild Elephant Ride

University of Oregon journalism professor Alex Tizon on the changing landscape of journalism and the continued need for good storytelling

Eric Gold

Alex Tizon, longtime reporter for the Seattle Times and the_ Los Angeles Times_, heard the death knell of journalism throughout his twenty-year career. Now a tenure-track professor at the University of Oregon, Tizon is working on a book about the changing perceptions of Asian males during a time when global economic power is shifting to the east; earlier this year, he received the prestigious J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for the book. He talks with Oregon Humanities about the having one foot in “the field” and one in “the tower,” the changing landscape of journalism, and the continuing need for good storytelling.

You won a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 1997 for your work at the_ Seattle Times, _exposing corruption in a federally sponsored housing program for Native Americans. Do American newspapers still have the same capacity to play this kind of watchdog role?

No, I don’t believe newspapers have the same capacity—to play watchdog, to write long enterprise, to showcase ambitious storytelling, to do anything it used to do with vigor. A few newspapers—the elite four or five—have maintained this capacity, but even they’ve cut back staff, which means fewer people digging into the underbelly.

On the other hand, technology has allowed more people and groups to play watchdog. Look at Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, and how they’ve impacted the practice of watchdog journalism. To the extent that newspapers can incorporate innovations such as WikiLeaks into their content, they can remain relevant and on the forefront of news coverage.

What’s your take on the current landscape of journalism? Is it dying? Evolving?

Yes, journalism is changing. Some parts of it are dying and other parts are nascent. Paper is definitely on the way out. Digital is where the action is right now and where it will likely be for the foreseeable future.

What hasn’t changed is the need for good storytelling. I mean that in the broadest sense: telling the story of Abu Ghraib, of Darfur, of Katrina, of Chevron’s massive and little-known oil disaster in the Ecuadorean Amazon, of intense suffering around the world, of small, unheralded triumphs by small, unheralded people—we still need this. We need creative and enterprising and courageous people to gather information, interpret it, and present it in artful and compelling ways. This is what the best journalists do.

How they’ll deliver their stories, and what platform they’ll use in the future, including the near future—the answers to these are evolving as we speak.

The rapidity of change is disorienting and frightening, and gives rise to the sentiment that the old ways are dying. Not to sound too mystical but it’s absolutely true: with death comes new life, the law of replacement. We’ll all be replaced eventually.

After many years as a working journalist, you now seem to have moved into academia.

I’ve been teaching on and off for almost the entire time I worked as a journalist—conducting workshops, doing lectures, that kind of thing. My primary work was reporting, and teaching was secondary. Now I see my primary work as both teaching and writing.

The book I’m working on involves some journalism (although I wouldn’t call it a journalistic book), so in no way do I see myself as having left the field for the ivory tower. I like the tower. You get a better view and you can think about things without the intense stress of story deadlines. But I love going out into the field, too.

Is this a permanent career shift? Has it changed the way you approach a project or story?

Who knows? There’s a saying in South Asia: when you mount a wild elephant, you go where the elephant goes. I’m on an elephant ride.