EconoJourn

While reading Colayco’s material, “Making Your Money Work: Pera Mo Palaguin Mo! 2”, I realized that some economic and financial concepts highlighted in the book cater some relationships to journalism profession.

Though, it may sound as another focus of journalism, just like News Journalism, Showbiz Journalism, Investigative Journalism among others, I do not regard economic journalism as a practice of informing the latest buzz in the economic arena, but rather, to inform how economic tenets relate to the practice of journalism as a whole. Economic Journalism is neither the spill of breaking news from the stock market nor the shears of latest business transactions in the Philippines everyday. Though it can be reasonable enough to make use of this term to sniff out over-all economic mechanisms, a more appropriate and comprehensible term can be used instead, and that is Business News.

Econojourn is a mirror image of economic principles to the practice of journalism profession. That is, principles of economics evaluated side by side with the ideals of journalism to come up with a distinct picture of convergence between the two realms. The following are some of the coinciding points:

1. *The more important obligation is to ensure that you are alive and capable to help others in distress. This rule applies to your financial life as well. If you are not financially independent, you cannot give much help to anyone.

• The same way goes with journalists:

“No story is worth a journalist’s life.” – Ces Drilon

“In dangerous coverages, fear can actually save journalists. If the risks involved are too high, then why pursue the story if you’ll only end up dead and not being able to air the story? What’s the point of rushing to an encounter site when you can’t live to tell the whole drama of it?” - Adrian Ayalin

The primary duty of a journalist observing the ethics of his/her profession is to inform and not to deform, to express and not to impress. And, yes, the dedication and the eagerness to pursue peculiar stories are there, but, it is more than a requirement for a journalist to secure his life first before anything else. After all, what will you do to a nice, well-crafted story, if you will not be able to tell it? How can you inform the public if your life has been taken away?

2. *Discipline and Right Attitude – You must understand where you are financially and what you want to do.

• I always emphasize the relevance of purpose and goal-setting. In order to arrive at a good story line you have to determine the reason, point/intention of doing such. In some cases, there are surprising situation, this may increase or decrease the quality of your story, so be quick and know the mechanism of your job. With discipline and right attitude, you can attain a journalistic work observing all sides of the truth. With discipline and right attitude, you are able to determine the limits in searching for good stories. Sometimes, in surge for unique stories, journalists go beyond police lines, restricted and prohibited areas.

3. *Continuing education – When you continue to improve yourself through continuing education, you will find fulfillment and self-satisfaction.

• To learn more about the craft of telling the public, education is a gate pass. As what I’ve said, there are many ways to educate ourselves – learning not only confined within the pages of books, but learning that springs both from the academe and real life practices.
  

4. Trade-offs

• Most of the journalists experience vast trade-offs – foregoing family time for a news story, trading –off friendly meetings to beat deadlines for relevant feature stories, going away for an assignment and sometimes putting their lives (in one way or the other) at stake because of their will to give the public what it needs; to exercise the profession prudently.

And a lot more...
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*Colayco, “Making Your Money Work: Pera Mo Palaguin Mo! 2”