These days, being a journalist can be hard.
Journalists are in a state of denial that our field is perfectly fine and in no particular danger. Try balancing that with the Venn diagram of "too much to report on" and "topics people will care about enough to read."
I'm not asking for your pity or your understanding. I just think that journalists can be, simultaneously, both the most and least caring people in the world.
I'm sure by now you've at least heard about the Occupy Wall Street movement, right?
What started as a gathering of protesters in Manhattan has become a global quasi-uprising. People have finally become fed up with the fact that the richest 1 percent of the world makes the decisions for the rest of us.
It doesn't matter whether you agree with their position. It's okay to disagree in this country; that's kind of the point of the First Amendment to our Constitution.
It took days for the mainstream media to even begin mentioning the protests. Major networks decided not to talk about it right away.
When reporters and commentators finally started talking about it, some of them did so with an incredible bias toward the movement in general. A right-wing opinion columnist for Fox News called the protests a "liberal whinefest."
But bias is not the point.
The point should instead be focusing on the wholly grassroots, homemade, global movement that OWS represents. According to the OWS unofficial website, occupywallst.org, the protest has reached about 1,500 cities across the world. I don't believe it can be written off as a group of liberal whiners at this point.
Grassroots movements are sometimes the only way stuff gets done. There seems to be a small disconnect between what the people want and what our representatives view as important. OWS may be criticized for not protesting a specific policy, but perhaps the movement is against the values that are highly regarded in today's society.
Interested in getting involved locally? Go down to Bo Diddley Community Plaza and join the local faction of OWS supporters in the Occupy Gainesville movement. To my knowledge, there hasn't been any violence instigated by the protesters. If there are large groups of people speaking out against something, there are bound to be police.
Would you rather see "#occupymybed" trending on Twitter instead? Fine, point taken. Perhaps the movement should be ignored or not touted as much. I get it. We have other stuff to worry about. For instance, how cold it is all of a sudden - am I right?
There are a ton of other grassroots movements for you to consider. There's a UF-based division of the ONE Campaign, which is a "grassroots advocacy and campaigning organization that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa," according to one.org. That sounds pretty noble, right? You can join "ONE at University of Florida" to stay on top of what events are available to participate in.
This week, the club invites us all to try living on less than $1.50 a day.
"Nearly 1 billion people around the world live on $1.50 a day, and for a week, we are challenging organizations at UF to do the same. Can you join the ONE CAMPAIGN, and live on $1.50 a day?" asks the Facebook event.
Some of those in the OWS movement are probably already doing this out of necessity or out of solidarity.
Citizens and journalists could stand to learn from their empathy and example.
Sami Main is a journalism junior at UF. Her column appears on Tuesdays.
