By CHELSEY SELLARS

Reporting on current events seems very simple from an outside perspective. Ask some questions, write down the answers, and then post the article on a medium: BAM, journalism.

Au contraire, the process of creating a well-saturated news story requires far more work and effort from the journalist. The goal of journalism is to deliver the truth by any ethical means necessary, which may require more than a basic Q&A.

Before conducting an interview, a journalist will usually prepare a list of questions or topics to discuss with the interviewee. Journalists are researchers. These discussion tools are a condensed version of all the research and inquiry the journalist made about the news topic.

Take for instance the recent CNN article about a ‘Hunger Games’ tour in Atlanta. Before writing this article, the journalist probably had to research what the “Hunger Games” was and why they had a tour set in Atlanta. He or she probably had to look up the company that was producing the tour to contact. The journalist may have also had to go to Atlanta and experience the tour for themselves.

Journalistic research can be a simple keyword search on Google or an elaborate voyage to an unknown place just to get a better synopsis of the topic at hand. Perhaps this is part of the reason why journalists, such as myself, fall in love with this field of study. Journalism combines our thirst for knowledge and love of writing than can lead us to an ambiguous quest.