"A resident reporter needs three things: Heart, Power and Profession"

The press is under pressure from the market, the pressure to support itself, so the time when the press wrote what the press needed is over, now it has to write what the readers need. To do that, we cannot help but rely on the team of resident reporters. But it seems that the attractiveness of the press, or more precisely the goal of attracting readers to the newspaper, is being misunderstood, intentionally misunderstood, or abused...

Deputy Minister Truong Minh Tuan:First of all, the goal of the Press Planning Project is to develop the press to keep up with the development trend of modern press and to develop the press, it is necessary to rearrange to avoid overlapping functions and tasks, avoid wasting resources in press activities, so that the press can better fulfill its objectives.

Deputy Minister Truong Minh Tuan.

Second, no one misunderstands, everyone knows everything, smart editors know what news to report, what articles to write to attract readers, they have to be smart because it is the survival of a newspaper, income, salary, and life of the staff all depend on the Editor-in-Chief's shoulders.

But in that wisdom, of course, there will be wisdom that is not yet wise, so people recklessly run news articles to attract readers, or hastily report hot news, report false news, even violate the law, or try to attract readers with prominent incidents... all are part of journalism tactics...

I think that modern journalism also requires strategy. Competition for news is not by day but by hour, even by minute. Whoever reports the news first, the "hot" news, wins in terms of readers, which means winning in terms of revenue...

The problem is here, the responsibility of the press is to know how to regulate capacity, know how to orient public opinion, know how to balance its information, and must accurately define with high social responsibility the two words "attractive".

Yes, it is true that journalism needs to be interesting, but what is interesting?

Deputy Minister Truong Minh Tuan: First of all, the most attractive thing is the news, hot and new, right away. This is very important.

Readers need to update information and the press needs to respond. If you are lazy and slow to provide information to readers, people will not read you anymore. Attractiveness is also the way of reporting. For the same event, a good journalist knows how to look at that event from which angle. If you are only greedy to find the details that are eye-catching, bitter, robbery, murder, rape to describe, to tell, you may be able to attract a certain amount of readers easily, but for the majority of readers, after those seemingly sensational, clickbait news, readers need a deeper, more humane perspective, an assessment, a prediction, a summary to deter, to educate, etc.

Attractiveness must not only be fast but also deep. I see most of the press only reporting news, giving interviews, reporting events, then letting readers discuss, "shoot the breeze" and comment on social networks without delving into the issue, without criticizing the issue they bring up if they feel they disagree. Between public criticism and press criticism on the same issue, surely press criticism needs to be deeper and better, that is the role of the press in guiding public opinion when an incident occurs...

The problem is that you have to look at things objectively, honestly, transparently, and clearly, then readers will follow you and support you. The appeal of journalism also lies in the truth of the information. For journalism, there is only one truth, only the truth. If you report information that you intentionally distort, are biased, dishonest, fraudulent, slanderous, dramatic, or exaggerated... it is very harmful. At first it may seem attractive, but it is the attraction of darkness that makes readers lose faith, and also causes the subject of reflection to be wronged and fabricated. However, here the press must also consider that not every truth can be exposed in the newspaper.

The appeal of journalism is also how to turn the Party's guidelines and policies, the State's policies and laws on paper into news, characters, and concrete actions that are realistic in life, and from there, it is a mirror reflecting whether that policy is good or not, and whether it has a good or bad influence on life. Therefore, journalism must also have the function of consulting the Party and the State on policies through professional activities... this is something we are doing little or not doing enough...

-Reporters at the newsroom are assigned to follow industries and fields according to their abilities, but resident reporters must know all fields. But it seems that resident reporters are both weak in journalism skills and shallow in general expertise...

Deputy Minister Truong Minh Tuan: I have been to many localities, wherever I go I meet the correspondents of newspapers, most of them are local people where the press agency assigned them to be correspondents or set up representative offices, that is reasonable, only then can they be resident. They are there, their hometown, surrounded by friends, relatives... even the leaders of agencies, businesses, local leaders are also friends, acquaintances, this is a very favorable factor, but also has many hidden difficulties and uncertainties because the press not only reflects the good, but also has to investigate and expose the bad, praise is okay, criticism is offensive... saying that to know that being a true correspondent is very hard, very pressured, requiring you to be very brave and dedicated, I share this a lot with you.

-So what special qualities do they need to have if they want to be a resident reporter in the best sense of the word?

Deputy Minister Truong Minh Tuan: That's right. You are a resident reporter in your hometown, so you must love the land and the people there. This love is very important. One can only strongly expose the bad and evil, strongly protect the truth, protect the good starting from love, definitely like that. When you are a resident reporter in that locality, that land, love helps you overcome all obstacles, all pressures, and makes your mind clear, your perspective transparent, and your writing proper. As a resident reporter, you must be very objective, appreciate the local things, the people there contribute, appreciate the good, discover bad and negative things, not just eagerly scrutinize and search for all the bad things to "hot" news or worse, when you find something bad, you use tricks to make money...

Many localities complain about this to resident reporters, saying, why do their localities do so many good things, make so much effort, but you guys write so little, and only focus on reporting on wrongdoings and bad things. I do not absolutely support the direction that you guys only praise and praise, praise what is praiseworthy of course, but do not tolerate anything bad, broken, wrong, or violating. The problem lies in your mindset when holding a pen.

So as I said, you write strongly about the bad things but your heart is pure, your heart loves the land and the people there, so you have to speak up to warn or expose the bad things with the whole proper attitude of a journalist, without tolerance, without compromise, without respect, that's good. Unfortunately, some of you have acted as the local people complained, whenever you go out on the street you only look for the bad things, which is not right, even going too far, doing wrong, even giving out bad information densely while not reflecting the good things, or if you do reflect, it is superficial and lazy; this way of doing journalism really needs to be stopped.

-If we have to say concisely the qualities or more simply the conditions of a resident reporter?

Deputy Minister Truong Minh Tuan: The late journalist Huu Tho once said: To be a journalist, you must have heart, vision and talent. For me, I think that on that basis, a resident reporter needs only three things: Heart, Power and Profession.

As I said above, the heart of a journalist is the ethics of a journalist. If you work as a journalist because of the concern for the progress and civilization of society, for the daily growth of the locality where you reside, I believe you will know how to report good news, know how to strongly reflect the bad things that the locality will respect and admire, and even thank you.

That is the social position of a resident reporter. This is very important. A reporter is just a reporter, without a title, but he can still create a status, a position, a great social reputation if he is a mature writer, writes deeply, discovers problems quickly, has a strong personality, has a healthy mindset, the local people will respect him because of that, this respect will help him a lot in his journalistic work. But the position of a resident reporter is not only established by him personally, the position of the newspaper he works for is extremely important. A newspaper with a strong brand will certainly have a strong position for the resident reporter. To be honest, many times when the local people say the name of the newspaper, they do not even know which newspaper, it is unfamiliar, so how can the working position of a resident reporter be strong enough?

Secondly, many, many resident reporters of newspapers, mostly electronic newspapers, are too young, immature, have limited life experience and social understanding, are very difficult to approach, very difficult to work with, especially when touching on big issues, tense incidents, it will be very difficult to get involved, not to mention the journalistic attitude of many young reporters, either too "brazen", too weak, or too superficial, this affects not only them personally, their articles, but also the reputation of a newspaper. Most of these young reporters who are new to the profession do not have or have not yet had a press card, only have a letter of introduction from the editorial office or even a representative office, so it is even more difficult to get involved in sensitive matters.

But to overcome this, to create a position for resident reporters is not easy, it needs to be long-term, it needs a strong, steady, professional step in the newsroom, it needs a very high level of maturity and striving of the individual reporters themselves. Finally, the profession. Resident reporters must be good at their profession, in this profession, in addition to writing, they must also be good at other fields, good at synthesizing, quick, sharp, otherwise they will be very confused or impulsive when reflecting on news, commenting, investigating...

Reporters at work. Photo: Internet.

-Looking at the three qualities of a resident reporter: heart, attitude and profession, it seems that newspapers have been very difficult or easy when selecting resident reporters?

Deputy Minister Truong Minh Tuan: That's right. Difficulties in recruitment lead to laxity. I still wonder, why is it so easy to be a reporter? There are some kids I meet and talk to that I can't believe are journalists. Some kids honestly brag, "Uncle, I'm a reporter mainly to get advertisements, to go on contracts to introduce information to units, I don't have a salary, even if I do have a salary, it's not enough for gas, I have to live on my own... Then I'm dead. Why do so many kids introduce resident reporters to this or that newspaper, they're very impressive but they spend day and night trying to make money for the editorial office through advertising? This is a big problem. It's this team of "advertising" resident reporters that has made things so complicated and is even damaging the reputation of many newspapers. How can you be a journalist when you just eagerly come and ask for advertisements, how can you write and write?

There are also resident journalists who are disciplined for violating ethics at one newspaper and immediately transfer to another newspaper, as if recruiting factory workers. How can we ensure that the two words "reporters" are fully qualified? There are very small localities that have dozens of resident reporters from 3 or 4 dozen newspapers. There are so many, but each month there are only a few similar articles...what does that mean?

Knowing that people are allowed to establish newspapers, they have the right to operate, but it seems inappropriate if the resident reporter team of some newspapers only specializes in hunting for advertisements... Not to mention that some representative offices also use a very large team of collaborators to collect advertisements. Worse, to facilitate these collaborators, people openly issue letters of introduction as... reporters... Local brothers jokingly say that when an incident occurs, for example, a strike by some workers, there are more journalists than strikers, looking at the photo, you can see a crowd of people... Perhaps we should think about training journalistic skills for resident reporters, because most of them have not studied journalism, and when they have poor journalism skills and become reporters, there are many consequences.

-But also have to quickly arrange, even revoke the licenses of some electronic newspapers….

Deputy Minister Truong Minh Tuan:We are working hard on this.

Thank you very much, Deputy Minister!

According to Infonet