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You can never truly stop being a journalist
Bird's-Eye View
Intelligencer Journal
Jun 22, 2009 00:02 EST
By DAVE PIDGEON, Staff Writer

The smell of his cigarettes still lingers in my memory.

He sat on a bench outside the newspaper building, his back against the old brick wall as a streetlight's orange illumination washed down on us. The police radio in his hand warbled about a three-car accident somewhere in the nightscape.

I won't expound about the rough spots in his past. That's his private business. But I was 23 years old and as unsettled as 23-year-olds can be, searching for identity and full of anger at just about everything. So I had to ask him: "What got you over it?"

He took his cigarette from his lips, hidden beneath a bushy mustache, exhaled smoke into the humid air, pointed to the ground and looked at me. "Right here," he said. "The job."

That was when I came to understand something about journalism, or more to the point, journalists.

•••

A job for most Americans is what they "do." It's the answer to a stranger's question: "What do you do?" But come closing time they leave their job at the workplace, because they would prefer not to have it define their existence.

But what journalists "do" is what they are at all times, whether they are in the newsroom or not. Meet a journalist on a holiday who claims not to be working, and you know a journalist who's lying.

The mind of a journalist cannot be turned off. We are always seeking — whether consciously or subconsciously — to understand our current environment and the motivations of the people we interact with, to gain a perspective on the present by dissecting the past and projecting the future.

Part anthropology, part sociology, journalism is an edifying and joyful way to proceed through life, pursuing a perpetual cadence of hows and whys, whether covering a press conference at City Hall or watching a trendy movie at the local theater.

A journalist's mind is driven by a current of curiosity flowing from years of research and the demands of editors who expect us to have a deep pool of knowledge regarding whatever topic we cover. That current produces constant waves of hard questions and tides of focused listening in professional and private life.


•••

At the end of the week, several journalists for the Intelligencer Journal and Lancaster New Era, including me, will cease to work as news reporters here, as the two papers merge their products.

I don't write this for sympathy. We stayed in the newspaper business knowing the pitfalls of a faltering industry.

My goal, rather, is to provide a perspective. Facing a job cut is hard for anybody — assembly workers who suddenly find themselves having to learn computer technology or accountants who now have to shovel gravel. That's hard.

Here's what I want to say about journalists in transition:

The person for whom I truly feel sorry in the wake of this change is my wife, Alison. She, in her good nature, has pointed to job openings in other fields which promise great salaries and sparkling new careers. I could be a marketing manager or a public relations specialist, she suggests in her unwavering support of me.

Yet each time, as much as I try to avoid it, I feel like a sailor who's been told he can no longer direct his ship into the wide-open ocean, who instead must be landlocked and hemmed in.

Imagine a job in which you're asked to keep the powers-that-be accountable for their actions — mayors and senators, CEOs and presidents, governors and lobbyists. Seems unnatural to transition from investigating the powers that be to working for them.

How can we transition into another kind of work environment — P.R., let's say — and not lob hard questions at our new bosses, the way we used to at press conferences in the state Capitol, just because to do so could get us fired?

Now don't let journalists lament this time of transition. The skills we gleaned from this industry should prove valuable, and we have been blessed with a career rich in experience, even if it didn't make us rich in our bank accounts.

Follow me on this.

Anytime life grows difficult outside the newspaper, the job provides the distraction and the source of confidence. There's always a fresh story to pursue and a new deadline to meet, and that perpetual cycle taught me what my friend meant that night when we listened to the police radio.

The news industry doesn't stop for your personal life. Instead, the news uniquely enriches a journalist's life. Every journalist can list stories that set their hearts ablaze and illuminated a new understanding of our existence.

I once saw blind Dominicans open their eyes to see again. I was a boy on the bus like Timothy Crouse. I listened to a woman exult about life while dying from ALS. I ate dinner with a homeless thief trying to rebuild his life. I heard an aging U.S. Army major, a survivor of the hellish cauldrons of D-Day and Bastogne, cry out for a life of peace. And I witnessed a black American inaugurated as president of the United States.

Whatever comes next for my fellow ex-journalists, I hope that it is anything but ordinary. May we never lose our journalistic instincts, and may we always have a pen and notepad by our side.

Quote of the week

"The brighter you are, the more responsible you are to your culture."
—The late Diane Meily, social studies teacher at Penn Manor High School, writing on her chalkboard in 1996 during a Western World Civilizations class.

E-mail: dpidgeon@lnpnews.com


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QUOTE
Imagine a job in which you're asked to keep the powers-that-be accountable for their actions — mayors and senators, CEOs and presidents, governors and lobbyists. Seems unnatural to transition from investigating the powers that be to working for them.


You are already in public relations. You make it sound like you work for the people of Lancaster County. Think long and hard about that. Everyone has an agenda. LNP is a business with fingers entangled in far more than just selling newspapers. There is nothing wrong with that but if you don't admit it than you are living a lie and is there any wonder that you are losing readers?

Having a newspaper business be in charge of distributing information does not work anymore. Politicians can buy them off, they can be involved in other enterprises counter to the public good, and they notoriously embellish stories because the goal is always to sell more papers.

I have friends in the journalism industry and i agree with much of what you said, but the local paper has to become more personal and real if it is to survive.

lanzate
Far too many otherwise excellent "journalists" reflect their employer's agenda.
Artie See
I've known Dave Pidgeon for almost as long as he has written for the paper. He has always been honest. I haven't always agreed with everything he's written, however it has been consistently well written, fair and balanced.

True news articles are not opinion pieces. They are not about what has happened to you, the reporter. Often as reporters you're sent in to write about something you don't agree with, or would never participate in (yes stories are most often assigned). Still, your job is to report it in a way that informs people what happened, without your own agenda taking precedence.

While its true that reporters are at the mercy of their editors they are also at the mercy of the public. No matter what you do as a journalist someone will always try to label you as being "too something". Still true journalist's thrive on that and love to prove people wrong about their preconceived notions. The only thing that most journalist's are is "too attuned" to everything going on around them.

Dave it has been my true pleasure and honor to know you. You are a journalist of the old school and to that I tip my hat to you.
Solancoforever
QUOTE (Solancoforever @ Jun 23 2009, 07:38 PM)
True news articles are not opinion pieces.

So is this your opinion or is this fact?

Here is my opinion. There is no fact. There is only opinion and theory and personal experience. And that is the issue. Postmodern society does not accept that facts exist, especially not through an appointed gatekeeper calling themselves a reporter.

The internet allows us to read as many different perspectives of a story that we want. There is not much else here in lancaster to read besides LNP but there is always talkback and the perspective section, which if i recall correctly is the most read section of the sunday news.

Worldview is shaped over a lifetime of personal experience. You might learn more about the Iran election reading the dialogue between salty and ceejay than reading MSNBC as long as you recognize that you are not reading truth but it is no less 2 very real perspectives that effect how the world is looking at the conflict.

lanzate
I was reading an old NY Times just today. From the 1800s. And I've done research on other old newspapers. The thought that 'in the old days' we had reporters without personal prejudices, agendas, and tendencies to reflect those who owned and those who read the papers is hogwash.
harv1
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