Matthew Mugmon: The quest for the answers

"What the hell do we do now?"

According to The Washington Post's Bob Woodward, this was the question Post editor Ben Bradlee asked Woodward and his colleague, Carl Bernstein, after the two intrepid journalists told him they had a big story at their fingertips.

The movie All the President's Men, Woodward pointed out in his Integrity Week keynote address this past October, slightly distorted Bradlee's response. If one is to believe the film version, Woodward said, Bradlee went on a highfalutin diatribe about why America's survival depended on them not screwing this one up.

I have to admit that there's something attractive and exciting about the latter version. As executive editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian this past year, it would have been nothing short of exhilarating to say to a pair of DP reporters at some point, "Go on home. Get a nice hot bath. Rest up... 15 minutes. Then get your asses back in gear. We're under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing's riding on this except the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country."

But, alas, Woodward was right when he impressed upon the Penn crowd the importance of merely asking, "What the hell do we do now?"

It's a simple, yet noble, next step to anything -- in journalism and in life. Leaders, he said in October, must "say 'this is totally new,' and to a certain extent start from scratch."

Far from having all the answers, journalists don't even have all the questions. That's what makes "What the hell do we do now?" so appropriate a starting point. The questions, paths and strategies, he stressed, can follow.

Reporters -- at a college like Penn or on the national scene -- don't, I believe, behave in terms of saving the First Amendment or even the United States. Trying to penetrate the shroud of secrecy at the White House, or at College Hall, is merely a matter of journalists doing their jobs. The reward is not some absurd sense of rescuing the nation or the University community, but of knowing that they're doing work that can make that community, or even the world, a better place.

I had the privilege this fall of serving on an Integrity Week panel on media ethics. At issue: "Is impartiality a pipe dream?" Many of the questions were based on the premise that the media is an impenetrable blob, a group of people who aim to dictate policy, or even ruin democracy, from the comfort of their newsroom desks.

In my more than three years at the DP, watching scores of 20-year-olds work hours and hours to the detriment of their grades and social lives, I've learned that it's a lot simpler than that. The elusive, omnipotent "media" is actually full of ordinary people -- people like you and me, people who try their best but are nowhere near perfect -- who are driven by a desire to reveal and tell the whole story, and who value the truth.

What comes afterward is up to those who read the articles and to those about whom those articles are written. It's up to the journalists to get all sides of the story and to keep asking questions -- or to admit, by asking, "What the hell do we do now?" that even they don't immediately know where to begin.

Woodward's speech included another gem: "Don't tell me 'never.'" It's what Katherine Graham, the legendary Post publisher, told him about doing whatever possible to "get to the bottom of this story, any story." The details are out there. And again, it's up to journalists -- hardworking and persistent, not pernicious -- to find them.

In my 3 1/2 years as a member of the DP, including this last one atop the masthead, I've been awed by how reporters and editors have taken part in this quest. In that office, I've rarely heard uttered the actual words "What the hell do we do now?" But every day, I saw them in action.

And as I leave 4015 Walnut Street behind, I do know that the generations of college journalists who follow me will continue to ask that one basic question.

Maybe someday I'll have an answer.

Matthew Mugmon is a senior Classical Studies major from Columbia, Md., and executive editor of The Daily Pennnsylvanian .

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.