By Colby Itkowitz

WASHINGTON- In 1963, famed columnist Jimmy Breslin defined journalism. The president of the United States had been assassinated. The rampant media frenzy washed over the nation with images now very much engrained in everyone’s memory- Jackie Kennedy climbing over the seat after her husband was shot, John-John saluting his father’s coffin as it passed and Walter Cronkite crying on television. It wasn’t difficult to get the story, to write the same story every other media outlet in the country was telling. The story of a country’s widespread grief and despair.

But not Breslin.

He was assigned to cover JFK’s funeral. Most journalists filed stories talking to dignitaries and trying to encompass a nation’s angst into inch limits and word counts. Breslin went to the graveyard before the funeral. He interviewed the commoner assigned the task of digging President Kennedy’s grave. The man spoke of the pain and the pride while he attempted to dig the perfect hole. Breslin was able to capture the country’ s heartache through one man whose raw emotion told the nation’s story better than anyone could.

Breslin taught us that the best news stories don’t come from press conferences; you can’t break news sitting behind a desk and the greatest journalists have one fundamental skill-listening.

Unfortunately, the climate of this presidential campaign season has not been conducive to finding “the gravedigger.” It’s a pollster’s game and political journalists cover it with 30-second spotlights. The Kerry campaign releases a statement, so the journalist looks through his Blackberry, calls the Bush camp for a rebuttal, throws in a political pundit’s analysis and boom- we have a well-balanced, hard news story on health care.

But is that the story we want to tell? Isn’t the real story actually about the 85-year-old widow down the street who can’t afford her drug prescriptions, so she’s not taking her medicine? Or the family who has to choose between putting food on the table or purchasing health insurance? George W. Bush and John Kerry cannot relate to the issues their speechwriters so passionately detail for them because they’ve never worried about their own economic tribulations. But still, journalists rely on them to tell the nation’s woes.

The story that needs to be told in the next five weeks before the election has nothing to do with swift boat ads or voting records. Journalists should be pounding the pavements, talking to the voters and finding out for themselves what really concerns Americans individually. And when they obtain that one powerful anecdote, they turn to these candidates and ask each of them what he plans to do to ensure that person’s life is easier.

Journalism is not about poll data or following behind in a press pool or standing in the back of a crowded press conference. It’s not Jay Leno’s opening monologue or a headline ticker on the CNN screen. It’s about that sole gravedigger, his hands muddied and his life unspectacular, who can speak volumes for an entire nation of people. To the reporters on the campaign trail: please go find your own gravedigger.

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