LOCAL journalists Tuesday engaged in a lively debate on the benefits and dangers in Jamaica of immersion journalism — a methodology which requires a reporter to live among story subjects to gather information over a period of years — after listening to a lecture on the issue by Pulitzer Prize winner Professor Leon Dash.

“I would love to do immersion journalism but there are certain constraints to think about,” said group sports editor at RJR Communications Group, Simon Crosskill. “If I wanted to do an immersion story about crime in the inner-city communities, would persons talk to me? They would have fears about their safety,” he argued.

“Then there is the fear about my safety were I to unearth stories about what is happening in these areas… I am all for immersion journalism as long as it is somebody else who is doing it,” said Crosskill, a panellist with Dash and several other senior local journalists at the discussion aspect of this year’s Excellence in Media function sponsored by the Press Association of Jamaica and Jamaica Broilers.

Another panellist, Kathy Barrett — also from the RJR Group — argued that there were several other issues that made the immersion style of reporting difficult to fully practise in Jamaica.

Those issues, she said, include:

* manpower shortage — with limited staff, it was difficult for media houses to give someone the time to immerse themselves in a particular setting with no guarantee of a story from the experience;

* the cost of alternate living and travel expenses for the duration of the immersion experience to the media house;

* whether the immersion journalism method was an objective one; and

* the lack of anonymity for broadcast journalists would prevent them from going incognito into a local community.

Dash, who is also a journalism professor, spoke of several of his experiences using immersion journalism. Among them was his following an underclass family for four years and writing an eight-part series that was published in the Washington Post in 1994. That effort won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1995.

Dash also said he spent 17 months working with teenage girls living in poverty in the US to get them to tell him why they consciously decided to have children. His series from this was titled ‘When children want children’.

He also told of his seven-and-a-half months in Angola with the guerrillas in 1976-1977, finding out their motivation for fighting.

“It is very important during interviewing that you keep judgement out of your eyes and your speech,” Dash said. “This will help the interviewee to relax and share more with you… It is also key that you do repeat interviews when doing a feature to get a richer story.”

Broadcast journalist Elaine Wint-Leslie cautioned against discounting the method without giving it a fair try. She reminded that it had, on occasion, been tried on a small scale and gave the example of Phyllis Thomas who in 1986 had gone to work on the night shift in the Free Zone for three days to come out with an award-winning story.

Thomas was also honoured Tuesday for that piece. Other persons receiving the PAJ/JBA excellence in media awards were:

* Carol Francis from Television Jamaica for her work on ‘A child’s perspective on HIV/AIDS’. She received a certificate of merit and $5,000;

* Patricia Watson from the Gleaner for her piece ‘Breaking the silence, dispelling the myths about HIV/AIDS’;

* Klao Bell, also from the Gleaner, won the top prize for print and a cash award of $50,000 for her story ‘Lost in the Justice system — the Ivan Burrows story’; and

* The Nationwide team from Power 106 copped the top prize for the electronic media with their piece on corruption at the National Housing Development Corporation and the Angus Report.