Reminding Me.

Mo Scarpelli --
Good journalism. Sometimes it makes you sick. It's a good thing -- if the journalist can reach you that deeply, they are doing their job.
Today is the fifth anniversary of the terrorism attacks of September 11th, and so several multimedia sites on the list of Picture of the Year winners have slideshows/presentations on the aftermath of the attacks. After sifting through several of these (Washington Post, especially), I got a little sick to my stomach.
I moved on to the large selection on the NY Times website... where I found Hurrican Katrina photos, one of a dead man floating in the flood facedown and bloated. I got even sicker.
And finally, I looked through the horror chronologized about the violence in Kosovo. The destruction of the homes, especially in the first picture, where a half-decayed pig lies in the center of the rubble, only added to my somber mood.
The pureness, the terrible conditions and the rawness of suffering captured by the winners of the Picture of the Year award from the NY Time made me sick to my stomach. I'm not complaining, though. This is good journalism. These are realities that need to be exposed, these are issues that need to stick in my mind.
The journalists at the New York Times inspire me to embrace the hardship of life as well in my journalism career.
Pictures really can tell a thousand words in some cases.
And then there are the times when there are just no words. Good photojournalism create these moments, and although we may feel sick, we cannot turn away.