Sociology, Journalism, and History

Sociology, journalism, and history are all variants of storytelling. It is through these media that evens are documented and related for future reference and generations. While the sociologist, the journalist, and the historian are storytellers in their own rights, it is now they choose to relate their stories that separates them from one another.

While all writers - be they historians, journalists, or sociologists - are encouraged to use creativity for the sake of the readability of a piece, not all writers can be imaginative (for the sake of preserving fact). The sociologist, however, has the sociological imagination. C. Wright Mills suggested that people are trapped mentally and psychologically in the respect that they do not understand their surroundings. However, sociologists learn early on to apply their sociological immaginations (though Mills himself says this idea is not limited to the sociologist) and thus make sense of life through an idiea of structure. "The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals," Mills wrote in his essay on the topic (5).

I cannot help but feel that historians are concerned only with the way events happened, and do not look further than the way things were. It is not the job of the historian to make projections; it is the job of the historian to record what happened as it happened and not to incorporate any bias or personal subjectivity: It is within the textbooks and the encyclopedic volumes that we can find the truth of a story, for there can be little dispute as to what has happened in the past; how the material is then interpreted does not rest on the shoulders of the historian. If they go so far as to record the unadulterated truth of the matter, then they have done their jobs well.

Journalists also record things as they have happened, but their primary concerns are generally current events. While they will record stories as they have happened, the concerns of the journalist do not end upon filing his or her story. Journalists are constantly worried about the future and wante to know what has happened and what will happen next. It is the job of the journalist almost to be omniscient, for they are most concerned with breaking a story first and the details falling into place later. I speak from personal experience as journalism student at this point. It is with amusement and bewilderment that I think of the comic instance in which wriers for wire services rushed to break the verdict of the Firestone lawsuit. A woman writing for a smaller service got the verdict out first, but it was the Associated Press who broke the details of the verdict. This did not matter to the woman, because her wire service could still say that they broke the verdict first. Once the largest of the ideas is in place, the smaller components can be fit together as they come in.

Unlike the historian, however, the journalist tends to be more present in his or her writing, even if he or she does not personally appear in the piece. Language for any writing can be very telling, but it is crucial to a journalist as the correct or incorrect choice of words can reveal any personal bias about a story. This can be both beneficial and detrimental to a journalist's career depending on the publication he or she is working for, the contacts he or she keeps, and the audience he or she is trying to reach.

A method more akin to the sociologist's practice than the historian's that every journalist is taught early on is an attention to detail. Unlike the sociologist, however, this attention is often superficial; a focus on the names of people and their positions in a story, the locations of settings, the sort of day it was. Details in the journlistic world are meant to add color and clarity to a piece, but are more for the benefit of the reader's interpretation than the writer's.

The sociologist, however, is concerned not only with what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen, but how the social order will affect a single individual. A sociologist is responsible not only for describing events, but theorizing how these events will impact the society as a whole. In this respect, it is not the isolated event that matters, but the event when viewed in regards to its impact on society and how society reacts to it. Referring back to Mills and the sociological imagination, one would consider things as they have happened, and then reconsider the scenario under different circumstances. Variables are changed and then the sociologist considers what the outcome would have been if the imagine circumstance had played out rather than the actuality.

Consider Alexis de Tocquevilled, who, in 1831 made a trip to a very young United States of America. During the course of his journey, Tocqueville sought not "merely to satisfy a legitimate curiosity...my wish has been to find there instruction by whicih we ourselves may profit," (36). His resulting work, Democracy in America, has become an important historic text, but was also an in-depth journalistic piece for its time. The then-current nature of the work offered much insight to Europe about the workings of the United States at a time when the world was not rapt with the undertakings of the North American continent. However, beyond basic reporting, Democracy in America also provided a detailed juxtaposition of the American government to European Aristocracy. It was through a journalistic sort of observation that Tocqueville drew attention to the fact that the American people shared equality, but it was through the use of a sociological imagination that he deduced that

"The Americans have combated by free institutions the tendency of equality to keep men asunder, and they have subdued it. The legislators of America did not suppose that a general representation of the whole nation would suffice to ward off a disorder at once so natural to the frame of democratic society, and so fatal: they also thought that it would be well to infuse political life into each portion of the territory, in order to multiply to an infinite extent opportunities of acting in concert for all the members of the community, and to make them constantly feel their mutual dependence on each other "(196).

Despite each American having equal freedom yet not equal wealth, the classes were kept in check by equal involvement in government. Because each holds equal weight in government, men of all classes become dependent on one another to make decisions and to continue to allow their government to function. It is through the comparison of the American government to the European aristocratic system (and, considering the date of this text in relation to the French Revolution, one could surmise that Tocqueville was more than hinting at his homeland's strife) that Tocqueville moved beyond mere observation and into a strick analysis of the different governments.

I present now an idea fresh in all of our minds: Hurricane Katrina. The historian will remember the event as a powerful hurricane that flooded the city of New Orleans. Surely it will be recorded that government upheaval concerning organizations like FEMA and mass criticism of the President ensued. Journalists, as the event is still current, have gone beyond the obvious story of flooding and displaced persons to asking what could have been done to help these people and why wasn't more done to help these people. There are accusations made that more would have been done if the people were of a diffferent class or race, but these ideas are discredited as they are theory and theory holds little water in journalism. Journalism is supposed to be about fact only.

Sociology, however, has quite a lot to do with theory (everything, in fact). Looking at what happened regarding Hurricane Katrina, it can be further examined as to why things happened. If the levees of New Orleans were built to withstand a category 3 hurricane, Katrina was category 4, had the city and the state already left the citizens of New Orleans to fend for themselves? Would people have been treated differently if were of a different race or class? It is not an accusation that is made, but a wondering of how events would have proved different if certain components were different. Again I reference Mills and his idea of the sociological imagination and his explanation that "the sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society," (6).

An event can take place and be recorded, but how it is remembered will differe depending upon who is telling the story. It could be based purely on fact, there could be a some form of opinion in it, or it could be considered in the context of why events played out as they did and how they could have been different. It is through the use of the sociological imagination that sociologists separate themselves from mere writes to consider events through more analytical eyes.