Welcome to the Pharos

Hello no one :) yet.

Welcome to the Pharos blog! I say those words and images of mummified kings, pyramids, sand, or giant cat gods may pop into your head. That's ok! When I first heard of the Huffington Post I thought it was a fan fiction site somehow related to the Hufflepuff house of Harry Potter's world. Connotations are tricky.

Let me give you a brief idea of our namesake and no, it is not (directly) related to King Tut.

Somewhere between the years 247 and 280 B.C., the Ptolemaic Kingdom built an incredibly large lighthouse (approximately 449 feet high) with a range of 29 miles. As one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it is widely believed to be the world's first lighthouse. Also referred to as the Lighthouse of Alexandria, this stone wonder served as one of the tallest man-made structures in the world for many centuries. In fact, the word "pharos" became the etymological origin of the word "lighthouse" in most modern languages including Greek, French, Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese, and Persian. It was an incredible archaeological feat that not only provided service to the boats at sea but also connected the island of Pharos and the isthmus of Alexandria.

So hopefully by this point, you hear the word "pharos" and instead of thinking "really really really old Egyptian king" you also think "really really really old lighthouse."

The more recent namesake of this blog was my senior capstone project when I was in school. I called my paper, "The Pharos Union," in hopes it would highlight my passion for exploring ethical journalism. You see, the objective of my project was to discover what advantages and disadvantages existed when attempting to maintain the ethical purity of media. In this idealistic paper, I found a handful of journalists I trusted who each had a different international background. These writers would go un-paid (YES) and would produce their stories on no deadline or editorial mandate. It was my goal to experience first hand, even if just for one day, what that would look like.

It turned out that while yes, finding writers who were both experienced in their perspective and enthused enough about journalism to be on board for no collateral was somewhat easy for me, maintaining the absolute standard of no human bias was, shocker, impossible. This was both a win and a loss for my experiment. On one hand, bias is what we find so frustrating with much of our modern news. If I say "Fox News" what's the first word that pops up in your head? How about "MSNBC"? We're back to connotations.

On the other hand, human bias is the exact ingredient it takes to make news palatable. So much of history happens because of what we feel, or rather, how something makes us feel. This is what makes "news" and "gossip" so difficult to distinguish from. We want facts, but what we're secretly looking for is some kind of direction on how to feel about those facts. This direction is found through diction. It's why someone like me, a Communication major, hears "Words don't matter" and cringes.

Ultimately, I wanted my paper to be as "pure" as possible. And I found out immediately that there was no way that could happen. I also discovered that it's okay. The Pharos Union reformed my belief in utopian news. Instead, I left the project with a newfound belief that perhaps we may never be perfect in our reporting of facts, but it's the struggle that's worth maintaining. Fairness, equality, neutrality: words that seem to drift further and further away from the island of modern media, yet still ring loudly in the spirit of many people on both ends of the political spectrum.

It is my utmost belief that we as individuals can bridge that gap. We can do everything in our power to maintain ethical reporting, well-rounded news and thoroughly investigated facts. I'm not saying it won't be an uphill battle, but seeing as we find ourselves on the cusp of assimilating speed with accuracy in terms of journalism, we don't really have a choice.

It's my desire that one can read this and instead of feel despaired, feel hope. That's what the lighthouse best represents, to us, journalists, and to chaotic ships searching for direction amongst the dark waters.

I'm not really sure what this blog will be about in the end. Maybe it will end up just being a place for me to put all my rants, questions and dreams. My hope is that eventually this blog will serve as a place where interesting, rounded and truthful stories can harbor refuge. Whether from myself or eventual contributors, I would love to see those stories bring whatever light they can to whoever is out there looking.

Safe travels,
Liz