A. Second Day

     Here is the beginning of a story in the regional morning daily newspaper in the Freeport area:

     The Freeport Chamber of Commerce announced last night that it will launch an investigation into complaints that merchants along U.S. 81 are gouging tourists.
     The chamber's board of directors approved the inquiry after a four-hour closed-door discussion that was marked by heated debate. The vote was 8–7, Fred Graham, secretary of the Chamber said.
     The matter was forwarded to the chamber by the U.S. Highway Users Assn., which said its members had complained of "outrageous prices, discourteous service, and unsanitary conditions" along U.S. 81 approaching and in Freeport...

     Make a list of story ideas for a folo in the newspaper or a local TV station. Give specifics for those you would contact.
     U.S. 81 begins at the southwest corner of the city near Three Corners Junction, enters on Hunter Avenue, goes up Vermont Avenue to Concord Street and then turns northeast on Oregon Avenue and exits the city. (See Freeport City Map (87.0K) .)

B. Purpose

     In his essay "Why I Write," George Orwell says there are:

     "... four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:
     1. Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend that this is not a motive, and a strong one....
     2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed....
     3. Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
     4. Political purpose—using the word political in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude."

     Orwell said that when he sits down to write it is "because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience...."
     Do you think Orwell's motives apply to journalism and journalists? Where do you find yourself in his list? Or have you still another motive?