“She smiled darkly and shook her head. ‘I’m not crazy. I’m not.’ Of course what else would a crazy person claim? That’s the Kafkaesque genius of it all. If you’re not crazy but people have told the world you are, then all your protests to the contrary just underscore their point. Do you see what I’m saying?”
— Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island
Imagine if you were to willingly have yourself admitted to a place like this; to be living among the inmates, with stale bread and bowls of ant-infested sugar to eat; constantly abused and yelled at by wardens; trying to hold on to your sanity; unable to get out. Would you do it?
Well, in 1872, Julius Chambers did.
A journalist for The New York Tribune, Chambers had heard reports of abuse of the inmates at Bloomingdale Mental Asylum in New York. The only way to get to the truth was to get an insider’s view, so he simulated lunacy and had himself admitted to the asylum. After ten days in the ward for excited patients, he was released from the facility by his collaborators on the assignment.
His findings, when published as an article in The Tribune, led to the release of twelve mentally healthy patients from Bloomingdale, a radical reorganisation of the asylum administration and a revision of the existing lunacy laws.
In this quest of Chambers’s to uncover the truth lies the spirit of journalism—storytelling with a purpose.
Whether through words, audio or video, a journalist empowers the world with the truth. He gives people the other half of the incomplete picture, enabling them to make better decisions. This is why, whether about a widely read area like sports or a niche field like medical journalism, your story matters. Somewhere in the world, your work is adding value to a subject and shaping another human being’s ideas. The trick is simply to combine your infectious passion with well-researched arguments.
This is the beauty of journalism; the ability to make others see something they couldn’t on their own. And it is this unforced, indirect influence over someone’s worldview that is a journalist’s superpower.