Thoughts on John Christie Visit

I think that John Christie and his wife are doing a great thing by running Pine Tree Watchdog and it's awesome to see people caring about investigative reporting. Although I haven't had a lot of personal experience with it, I love investigative reporting and want to do more of it. The biggest investigative piece I've done was my article for TNH, Students by Day, Strippers by Night about student strippers at UNH. I think those pieces are worth so much more than everyday news stories (not that those aren't important). What I really admired about John is that he is willing to sacrifice relationships for journalism. He lost board members because of stories that he wrote. I like that he understands the importance of telling stories and that he doesn't shy away because of how it affects people he knows. He seemed very fearless and I liked that. With my stripper story it was actually removed from TNH's website because it negatively the girls in the article and that made me angry. The point of journalism isn't to protect people and hide their stories. Those girls agreed to talk to me and have their stories published. The fact that TNH removed the stories to protect them was upsetting and went against the point of investigative journalism. I think that if that story had been on John Christie's site and the decision had been his, he would have left it up. I admire that fearlessness and ability to stand his ground. It's a good quality to have as a journalist because it's important to be strong and resilient when telling difficult stories. I'm glad that John Christie came and talked to us and let us know that it's ok to write stories that are harder to cover.