By Steve Irvin
PHOENIX - In 22 years of reporting I’ve almost always been mindful of the words of Bob Dotson, one of the great storytellers in journalism. “The reporter is not the story,” Dotson famously said, the first of his handful of commandments about good writing and story crafting. It became one of the unwritten rules of my career.
Even as the media environment has shifted to one which is increasingly personality oriented and self-aggrandizing, I’ve tried to stick to this rule. For one, most of the people I report on are far more interesting than me. For another, self promotion is too often disguised as journalism.
Like all rules, however, Dotson’s can and should be broken. When I broke it, I told the story of my own ignorance. Few stories I’ve done have received a more positive and overwhelming response.
I told the story of my own skin cancer diagnosis. I admitted I hadn’t taken it seriously. I admitted to some common misconceptions about the disease which kept me from dealing with it sooner. I did all the things we typically warn people not to do, and I paid for it with a scar and a scare.
I also suspended much of the vanity which typically walks hand in hand with the job. No makeup or hair or studio-quality lighting -- just me, scared out of my wits eating some humble pie.
Since it aired, however, it would be hard to recall a story in the last two decades which has elicited the same kind of response. The story was re-tweeted and re-posted dozens of times. I received dozens of messages from other skin cancer survivors and medical professionals who thanked me for telling the story and calling attention to an ever-growing problem. Rather than getting a chorus of admonishments that I should have known better (being in the business of information); instead I received credit for being human.
Then my boss sent me this YouTube video .
It’s a well done effort and it’s worth five minutes of your time. It brought me to tears, because it points out how devastating skin cancer is to people in their twenties, especially when they’ve spent their teens in the sun. It made me think of my own son, who is only 14, and constantly being reminded to put on sun screen.
Like many other serious illnesses, skin cancer is preventable by the little decisions we make every day. Just like heart disease is often a function of choosing every day to eat right and exercise, skin cancer is a result of deciding to protect yourself and watching your own body. So while mine may seem like a familiar story, we know it’s a reminder that needs to be repeated.
And that’s the real benefit of the story. By breaking Dotson’s rule, I might just cut through the clutter and encourage someone to check out that skin irregularity or mole they’ve been ignoring. It might encourage just one teenager to be a little more cautious outside. It might hit home for somebody just as it did for me.
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