The currency of life

MANHATTAN NY-- The seasoned reporter was humble despite his bravery in Iraq. At 11:15 on a Monday evening, world class journalists are often doing one of two things, covering one story or resting up from another. The noise from the street was incessant, but was also probably much more peaceful than the gunfire and chaos he was used to.

Edward Lee Pitts entered Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 2001. He started classes the following Friday after the September 11 attacks on the East coast.

According to Pitts, it was clear that his field of study had suddenly shifted,

"Even before my journalism career began I kind of knew that the profession had changed forever," he said. "Little did I know, shipping out to college in a little U-haul van, that I would be reporting from Iraq three years later."

The Tennessee native said he had always liked to write, and was curious about the world around him. Pitts felt that he could not lead a monotonous life, but needed to walk in the shoes of others, to be the senses of the people who cannot be where the news is. The common man can't go to Iraq to see if the war is justified,  so the journalists must go instead. "It's a humbling profession," he said. Pitts also finds humility in his faith.

"I don't try to hide the fact that I'm Christian. I feel like our role as Christian journalists is to cover the news as professionally and intently as everyone else, but also have our faith inform it." He went on to say reporters shouldn't hide their Christian worldview, and that his beliefs influence him to treat all people as esteemed by God.

"I've always thought that the currency of life was experiences." He went on to say, "I've always had a backstage pass through Journalism to history. Other people aren't there, we [journalists] are their eyes and ears."

After graduating, Pitts traveled overseas with the 278th Armored National Guard Unit, also from Tennessee, to become embedded and report from the middle of the fight. He arrived in 2004 and reported for seven months, where a lack of armor would propel his name into the international papers. When Pitts arrived in Kuwait however, he didn't find soldiers standing around aghast at the dangers of IEDs, improvised explosive devices, but American ingenuity at work.

He said, "Soldiers didn't want to drive four days unarmored. Being initiative takers, they took scrap metal from previous bomb incidents and welded it on." He added that the Tennessean regiment referred to the customized vehicles as ‘hillbilly armor'.

Pitts urged soldiers to speak up in late 2004. One directly challenged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asking, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?"

Now relaxing in an air conditioned Manhattan apartment overlooking Greeley Square, the reporter reflected on his experiences with a sense of pride, without thumping his chest or condescending. Pitts spoke as-a-matter-of-factly of roadside bombs and skirmishes.

While Pitts was embedded, the Chattanooga Times didn't assign him the personal security like larger papers had, so he stayed in the barracks with the soldiers.

"It was an interesting experience, you're supposed to be unbiased and detached, but it's difficult to do that with people who are protecting you. It's a challenge. It's difficult to remain detached when you're eating, sleeping and staying in the same barracks they are. I'm supposed to writing about what they do, bad or good. But all of a sudden if a firefight goes down and they're the ones protecting me. It's kind of a weird feeling to be reporting on the people who are protecting you."

In a place where bullets stung the air like so many hornets, Pitts often went ‘outside the wire' [left the compound] to report on raids. While embedded in Iraq, Pitts spent a lot of time talking to God. He said that living in a combat zone is like a great spiritual enema; "it cleanses the soul and makes you focus on priorities."

A far cry from the deserts of Iraq, the seasoned journalist has also spent time reporting in the political battlefields of Washington D.C. as a correspondent for World Magazine, reporting on Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan's economic ideas as well as the senate primaries.

Although politicians are infamously difficult to get in touch with, Pitts has a few tips for young journalists trying to delve into the world of political journalism.

"The key is letting them know who they are talking to," he said.

When working with a magazine such as World, he lets leaders know that by spending a little time with him, the politicians are really spending a little time with a couple hundred thousand people.

"Politicians are always looking for a way to amplify their voice," he said, adding, "It's hard for an outsider to get in if you're not a credentialed member of the congressional media."

Also, many congressional members are more willing to talk to reporters whose newspapers are based in their voting districts- Pitts says that it is a matter of proving what kind of audience a young reporter is writing for.

Secondly, Pitts believes that inexperienced journalists must be persistent. Congressional members generally have large personal staffs, which exist largely as gatekeepers, allowing only select information to reach the top of the politician.

In regards to working with staff, the reporter said that people such as press secretaries often turn reporters down- and most reporters stop calling after the first attempt.