Journalists work hard. They slave over their keyboards and notepads.
They work endlessly to report the news. And what do they have to show
for at the end of the day? Money? Power? Fame? No. After all of it, journalists are left with only their cherished bylines. Every journalist likes to see their name in on online cell phones
print . Be it a tiny contribution line, or a front-page byline,
journalists like to get their name in the paper. Even if only a handful
of readers actually bother to read who wrote the story, that one line
of ink means the world to journalists. This is because journalists are narcissists.
Journalists, no matter if it is their first article or the 100,000th
article, never get tired of seeing their name in print. It is not
uncommon to hear a journalist say something like, “I had 589 bylines
last year” in an effort to show what an intrepid journalist they are.
No matter if 400 of those “bylines” were for stories that were simple
one source stories or press release rewrites. In a journalist’s mind a
byline is a byline is a byline and they like them all equally. Journalists also like bylines because in today’s
news business of cutbacks and hiring freezes, it is all about what
journalists have done lately. Who cares if a journalist won a Pulitzer
in 2006 for an amazing investigative piece about the inner workings of
the Chinese Mafia where they spent 16 months undercover as a drug mule?
How many bylines have they had in the past three days? That’s what
editors care about, and if the answer isn’t 35 look out. Bylines equal
job security for journalists. Though after all the labor and sweat that
journalists pour into their bylines, at the end of the day bylines
exist only for that day. The next day journalists get up to do it all
over again.
BY DAVID YOUNG
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