Do you ever feel like becoming a reporter?

Sometimes I get so frustrated with the information that is out there but is not getting published. What has become of the news media? Have they turned to mush? Yes, they have reported some things, but not everything. It a sad time when even the Enquirer sits on a story for two years. Isn't it their job to report such items proof or not?

What about the rest of the media? They reported stories about all of the WMD, but now where is the media calling for accountability from our government? The government who went against the world and attacked Iraq because of the information they acquired. The government who has not been held accountable after the fact. Have they all been paid off? Does the country not care to know the truth since it will make us, as a nation, look bad? What happened to the old days when people protested and the government slinked off in shame for their actions?

I know I am not a professional writer, or much of an amateur one, but I feel like writing for a paper and getting the information out there. Why has society out on blinders? Why aren't the reporters doing their job and really reporting? Anyone?

Christina

If I had college to do all over again, I wouldn't major in journalism!

Hey, why not start an underground paper in your area?

You're right, it doesn't pay much. But I like my job.

once I got past covering city (YAWN) council meetings. Radio was much more fun!

just to get into e3

everyone told me I should go into journalism. I am so glad I didn't make it a career. Knowing me, I would have sold myself up the river for a byline.

Freelance, that should change buy the end of the week though. As for why they aren't doing their jobs...well some think they are. Others aren't able to do theirs because their bosses won't allow them. So many meida outlets are owned by megatycoons who don't want the truth told.

It was at a 'careers day' event at the International School of Geneva. A BBC reporter told me of being held at gunpoint in Lebanon with two other guys on either side of him. The gunman shot and killed both the other men and let him go. That was enough to put the fear of God/Allah/YHWH into me...

I have always been interested in becoming one sooner or later. So I called a CBC reporter and asked him to have a sit with me about it. So we did. The stories were, amazing, scary, exciting, and sad. But it's not for everyone, I still want to do it...but I wanna ease in slowly.
Read "My war gone by, I miss it so" by ANthony Loyd..good book. Loyd an idiot though.

It's getting a lot of press. Pretty harrowing, I guess.

I have a fantasy where I'm a cross between Helen Thomas and Murphy Brown.

Most of that time I have been affiliated with two magazines, one of which I did two three-year stints (or stunts, as it were) as editor. I've juggled that with a career as an airline pilot. I have avoided conflicts-of-interest in my writing career as studiously as I avoid rattlesnakes here on the mountain ridge in North Carolina. It has never been a problem.

I am doing mostly fiction now, so it matters not. Different animal. My engineering degree from Georgia Tech prepared me for neither my highly sucessful technical writing and reporting career nor my blooming fiction career. So, go for it!

Reporters do not get to choose which stories to report. With rare exceptions, journalism is not about getting the truth out - it's about bottom line profits and/or furthering the political philosophy of owners.

For an extreme example, look at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review (originally the Greensburg Tribune Review), owned by the notorious Richard Mellon Scaife.

One of my adult children freelances and does environmental pieces for Living on Earth/NPR - they pay about $50/a story. The pay for a journalist is abysmally low - you have to have an independent source of income (inheritance or highly paid spouse) to live with a reasonable degree of comfort in a city like New York.

small understaffed weekly. underpaid.
but it's a franchise, a ticket into the arena.
there is a certain amout of tedium, yes.
now and then it kicks ass.
and once in a while, perhaps only a couple times a year, i get to walk into the office of some pompous, self-centered public official and sit down for an interview. I ask a couple of softball questions and then start with something like...."Sir, I also want to ask you today about ...." and the rest of the sentence is lowering the boom. The grinning full-of-himself public official's face instantly changes to a look that says "Oh, FUCK! How did he find out about THAT?!?"
That look, the feeling it produces....makes it all worth it. Hell, I'd do it for free if I could.

13 years with my state's largest daily. It is a great way to get to know people if you are new to the area. You certainly meet everyone there is to meet. And is was a great job until about 1997 when all of journalism turned tabloid. I was going along just reporting on what I thought was significant and then boom the turn to shock and awe journalism...Editor: "Call the relatives of the deceased to find out how they feel about the violent death of their loved one"...Just a terrible, terrible way to make a living. It was truly humiliating to me to make money off of the indepth exploitation of the misfortune of others. I eventually quit...I am sure the vast majority of reporters in this country are reporting the news accurately, it is the editors and owners who are deciding what gets read.
But as an aside, you are going to sell more papers with a front page headline: Wacko kills three Catholic nuns, than State balances Budget Again...MOney is truly the bottom line.