The heart of journalism <3

It's hard to go a day without hearing about media bias, corrupted journalists, the shrinking market and how our jobs will be unnecessary in a matter of years.

False.

People can say these things, but the truth is, the public will always need what is at the heart of journalism. Reading this article tonight on cnn.com reaffirmed that thing I have always believed about (and initially drew me to) journalism, but I often forget when I worry about when I'm working to build my resume. Journalism is about the people and for the people, and nothing will ever change that.

This article is about a photographer who, in 1984, began a project to take photos of all 676 residents in Oxford, Iowa. These photos are now in a book called "The Oxford Project," with photos of as many of the same people as possible 20 years later. In his second time around, he brought a journalism professor to get their life stories. The following quotes really stood out when I was reading the story:

Bloom says journalists these days too often talk to the nation's power players and too few times to working-class people.

"The idea was not to talk to the decision makers, but talk to the people whose lives are affected by the decision makers," he says. "My job in Oxford was to talk to the voiceless, to people who don't have any voice who are the backbone of America."

"People will talk if you're willing to listen," Kristi Somerville says. "They're not small-town stories. They're human stories."

Her mother adds of Bloom's at-ease style. "He said, 'Tell me about your life.' How often does somebody ask you that: Tell me about your life?"

"I walked away from this knowing that life turns on a dime," Bloom says. "I realized that life is really dependent on moments, and you don't know when those moments are going to take place when you wake up. And sometimes when you go to sleep at night, you don't realize those moments have taken place."

We forget that journalism is about people, and when we write about real people, we make a connection. And that's the coolest job in the world. Maybe this post is a little cheesy, but I guess I needed an article like this to remind me why I decided to major in journalism in the first place.