MW
From Journal Entry to Investigative Journalism
Examining Preconceptions of Country Music
The Journal Entry:
Recently, I have become particularly fascinated by the comment, “I’ll listen to anything but country.” For the years and years of I have heard this, I have always thought very little of it. For the longest time, I thought it was sincere music preference. But recently, I’ve grown increasingly less satisfied by the explanations:
"I can't stand country music."
"It all just sounds the same."
"It sounds twangy."
Is there some underlying prejudice going on? Why is there a “popular consensus” on the hating on of country music? I think it may be just due to pure ignorance and/or prejudice. You can’t just “hate” an entire concept. Each country song sounds incredibly different from the other. For there to be such a strict opinion on an entire genre, some prejudice against country music, its listeners, and its singers has to exist. This isn’t so surprising though, considering American history and the general views of the South, and southern culture...
I wonder if this negative opinion on country music is dependent on geographical location. Perhaps this opinion is is divided between northern and southern parts of the United States? I think it’d be interesting to dive a little deeper...
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The Investigative Journalist Article
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Prior to this project, I had written one investigative journalist article. The first article was no doubt a challenging task. I figured given the amount of resources available and support I had from my fellow classmates and professor through the Minor in Writing, this was the perfect oppurtunity to revisit the genre and build more skills as an investigative journalist writer.
To start off the project, I chose a journal entry describing a topic I had been thinking about for quite some time: preconceptions of country music.
The project posed many challanges. Tone, research, narration, statistics, quotes, everything needed to be woven carefully together. The story needed to have a logical flow. The topic needed to be narrow enough and interesting enough to examine. Given the magnitude of the project I faced, it only made sense to turn to some references. I looked up some of Malcolm Gladwell's (one of my favorite investigative journalist writers) works, spefically Big and Bad, to examine how he smoothly incorporated all these components. Then I got to work.
Three of the hardest things in this article: tone, narrowing down my topic, and the conclusion. Essentially, this article discusses people's prejudice on southern culture and the country music genre, therefore it was hard to juggle ethos while pointing out flaws in people's argument. At first, I tried to approach the article as a personal quest for answers, but given the touchiness of the topic, I ultimately chose to remove myself and to retain a more objective tone.
In the initial stages, I struggled a lot with narrowing down my focus. I had too many ideas and I wanted to talk about all of them. Because of this, it was hard to find a direction for the piece. After some reworking of concepts, lots of deleting, and deeper analysis, I was able to draw more connections between concepts. This helped significantly with the conclusion.
Now, I have never been the greatest with conclusions. I always desire for them to be Awesome—to tie everything togehter and also leave a lasting impact on the reader's consciousness. The conclusion of this piece is most definitely not perfect. But I've learned other very valuable lessons with this article. I've learned the effective use of an objective tone. I've taken risks with approaching a more controversial topic and subjected myself to more criticism that I would normally feel comfortable with.
Risks are scary. But there is no growth where chances aren't taken.
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Reflection
