What Really Matters

(Photo provided by https://a2ua.com/newspaper.html)

This weeks blog was inspired by Diana Sugg who wrote a hard hitting story about children who are dying. Diana Sugg at the time was a writer for “The Baltimore Sun” and wrote a story about children dying, but focused primarily on a 12 year old boy named R.J. Voigt. The article can be found here. To sum her essay, she writes about her process and emotions while documenting about R.J. She stated that she was at the hospital for most of the 28 days if not all of them and stayed there as long as she can. She described her emotions at first being shy and scared, but slowly started to get comfortable with talking to R.J. and his mother. She also had to struggle with finding what is ethical or not and remembering that she is there for her job and not there to play. This story she was trying to write was written with the purpose of trying to inspire and reach out to other families going through children’s sickness and death.

The reaction to had for this story, was sadness. I felt like I was really apart of her life when reading her essay. She really hit the emotional side of the story and I got attached to her story. When she described how she felt like she wanted to just play and hangout with R.J. but was unable to because she knew it wouldn’t be right. There were many times where she questioned herself would it be right if she helped R.J. or would it be right to get involved emotionally with R.J. and how would it effect her story. She also had questions many times where she didn’t know if it would be appropriate to speak with the mother on a personal level, but at times she felt it would be disrespectful and almost impossible not to listen and talk to her. At one point early on in her essay, when she first started to see R.J. and the mother she explained how at first Diana and her photographer would sit outside of the patients room and feel like she was “vulture”. She felt this way because she was up close and personal with R.J. asking him and his mother many questions and having her photographer bombard R.J. and his mother with pictures. She remembered feeling sad and scared because she didn’t want to feel like a vulture. I personally think many reporters act in a manner where they seem like vultures. They bombard and get in peoples faces trying to be the first one to get answers and opinions on a fresh topic. Also at press conferences and events of that sort they always have pictures taken every second and all shout at the speaker. Overall I think this was a very inspiring essay and it also had a great result according to her and the blogs that the other families responded to when the report came out.