Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere

Host:
The printing press rumbled like an iron heartbeat in the basement below, the sound shaking the floorboards of the old newsroom. The air was thick with ink, coffee, and the faint electric hum of fluorescent lights that had forgotten how to sleep. Through the tall, rain-streaked windows, the city flickered — headlights, sirens, neon — all bleeding into one long unbroken narrative of urgency.

Jack sat at a desk piled with papers, a half-burned cigarette balancing on an ashtray, its smoke rising like a question he hadn’t yet answered. Jeeny stood by the window, her reflection superimposed on the rain, her eyes far away, as if she were listening to something inside her that the world’s noise couldn’t reach.

Jeeny: “You’ve been writing again.”

Jack: “I’ve been trying. But all I seem to do is report.”

Jeeny: “Report?”

Jack: “Yes. Facts, events, quotes, timelines. The kind of truth that doesn’t feel like the truth at all.”

Jeeny: “That’s what journalism does, Jack. It tells us what happened.”

Jack: “No. It tells us what appears to have happened. It’s what Archibald MacLeish meant — ‘Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man.’”

Host: The rain intensified, drumming against the glass like fingers on a keyboard, as if the sky itself were typing another story they would never read.

Jeeny: “And you think that’s wrong?”

Jack: “No. I think it’s necessary. But it’s soulless. It flattens the world, makes tragedy sound like a statistic, and joy like a headline. It’s a way of knowing without feeling.”

Jeeny: “And poetry?”

Jack: “Poetry does the opposite. It bleeds to tell you what it’s like for one person — just one — to exist inside that moment. It says, ‘This happened to me, and maybe it’s happening to you too, but only we will ever feel it this way.’”

Jeeny: “So journalism is the world, and poetry is the soul.”

Jack: “Exactly. Journalism collects; poetry confesses.”

Host: The clock on the wall ticked — steady, uninterested, like time itself had grown bored with truth. Jeeny turned, her expression lit by that soft, dangerous conviction she always carried when she disagreed.

Jeeny: “But don’t you see, Jack? The two aren’t enemies. Without journalism, poetry would have nothing to rebel against. The world must first exist before the soul can interpret it.”

Jack: “Maybe. But what if truth gets lost in the translation? What if the story of the world becomes so loud that no one hears the story of the individual?”

Jeeny: “Then it’s up to people like you — people who can see both — to bridge that silence.”

Jack: “You’re giving me too much credit. I’m just a man with a pen and a deadline.”

Jeeny: “No. You’re a man with a mirror. You can choose what to reflect.”

Host: The printer stopped suddenly, leaving a hollow quiet that echoed through the room. Jack’s cigarette had burned itself out, a small gray ghost in a tray full of others.

Jack: “You know, the first story I ever covered was a fire. A building went up in flames, and I wrote about the smoke, the sirens, the deaths, the heroism. I thought I’d captured it. But then I saw this woman — she was standing barefoot in the street, just holding a single shoe. Her own, I think. I remember thinking how quiet she was. Everyone else was shouting, but she just stood there. I didn’t write about her. She didn’t fit the narrative.”

Jeeny: “And you’ve been regretting it ever since.”

Jack: “Every day. That silence was the real story. That was the poem I didn’t write.”

Host: The rain lightened, slipping into a whisper. Jeeny leaned forward, her voice low, measured, tender.

Jeeny: “You can still write it, Jack. It’s not too late. That’s what poetry does — it rescues what the world forgot to see.”

Jack: “But will anyone read it? People want facts, not feelings.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But facts age; feelings echo. Which one do you think survives?”

Host: A neon sign outside blinked, casting her face in rose and gold, like a painting half-alive. The silence between them thickened, but it wasn’t empty — it was pregnant, sacred, alive with the tension between what can be proven and what must be felt.

Jack: “So you think poetry is a kind of justice?”

Jeeny: “No. I think it’s a kind of mercy. Justice is about what happened. Mercy is about how it felt.”

Jack: “And journalism?”

Jeeny: “The report of the world’s wounds. But poetry — that’s the heartbeat under the bandage.”

Host: He laughed, quietly, the way people laugh when they’ve been understood against their will.

Jack: “You know, maybe MacLeish was right — journalism wants to unite us by generalizing, but poetry separates us to reveal our sameness. It’s like two sides of the same mirror.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. One shows you what everyone saw. The other — what only you felt.”

Host: Outside, the rain had stopped. The city gleamed, reborn in reflections. The press started again — a metallic, mechanical thunder that filled the room with the pulse of a living world.

Jack stood, walked to the window, and looked out at the streets — the buses, the umbrellas, the faces, each one moving through the same weather, each one living a different story.

Jack: “Maybe that’s the truth, Jeeny. Journalism tells us what happened. Poetry reminds us it happened to someone.”

Jeeny: “And sometimes, that someone is us.”

Host: The camera would pan slowly now — across the typewriter, the notes, the coffee cup, the smoke dissolving in the light. The press roared, spitting out pages that fluttered like birds, each one carrying a headline too impatient to feel.

But at the back of the room, where two voices had collided — fact and feeling, report and reverie — something quieter had been born.

And as the scene faded, the voice of MacLeish seemed to echo between the walls —
that poetry, in the end, is not about what happened,
but what it meant to be there when it did.