We're an odd bunch

Journalists are warped, depraved people.

We have to be.

The values system that most of America follows just doesn’t translate with the way our brains operate. Our world is different than yours.

The world in which journalists live is dictated by deadlines, getting information, and always being right (or at least trying to always be right). We live in a world that almost completely revolves around other people.

That world screws with our heads in beautiful, disturbing ways.



I got to thinking about this earlier today when I went to an investigative reporting session put on by a former Pulitzer Prize winner as part of Journalism week.

I noticed a few things.

For starters, I’m constantly thinking in terms of tomorrow. When people ask me the date, I instantly think about the date of the next day and then subtract one.

This is probably because of the whole deadline thing, which is also the reason I have a constant twisting feeling in my stomach that I can only imagine will develop into an ulcer by the time I hit 30.

Mr. Pulitzer talked about how the deadline game worked when he was a foreign correspondent, and how beating other reporters by just 30 seconds could mean a promotion and a raise.

Journalists also evaluate the world much differently than other people.

For instance, Mr. Pulitzer’s favorite president was Richard Nixon.

I’m going to guess that on the general public’s list of great leaders, Dick Nixon is nowhere near the top.

Why, then, did Mr. Pulitzer like Dick so much (get your mind out of the gutter perverts)?

Because Nixon provided and cooperated with plenty of great stories. That’s how we think. We don’t want good, decent subjects with clean pasts and perfect ideals. We want people who are a little fucked in the head. It just makes for more interesting stories.

“It’s the chicken shits that give you a tough time,” he said. For all of President Nixon’s shortcomings, apparently he wasn’t a chicken shit.

Finally, take a trip to the local newsroom sometime and prepare to be appalled by the jokes that get thrown around.

Everybody’s lives are touched by death, violence, tragedy and an assortment of other bad things. Our lives are consumed by these things.

I don’t know whether it truly a matter of being desensitized or if it’s just a way to cope, but at a certain point all the bad things that happen in the world, or most of them anyway, become instinctively funny.

During my brief time as a journalist, I’ve laughed and seen people laugh at some truly horrible things.

Take the Natalie Holloway situation. There’s absolutely nothing funny about what happened to her. But, when she first disappeared, there were wire updates about nine times a day. And, to be honest, similar things happen to people all the time.

So she became fair game for newsroom fodder.

Mr. Pulitzer talked about that as well, at least how much the business of news reporting has to do with death.

“The amount of money we make off death is astounding,” he said.

I think it’s important to note he had a smile on his face when he said it.