A journalist’s day can sometimes get a bit mundane. Morning meetings followed by coffee breaks, calling sources, writing web updates, budget meetings, blogging, some sort of city/council meetings, budget meetings, writing stories and rewriting press releases. In fact, without a reporter’s notebook in hand or a flask in the back pocket, journalists can be mistaken for data processors.
That’s until there is breaking news.
At the drop of a hat, the police scanner in the newsroom can crackle with some breaking news, such as a bank robbery, tornado or murder spree that will derail the journalist’s mundane everyday routine.
That’s because, for journalists, breaking news is like calling an audible on goal and inches. No one knows what’s going to happen. It is for this reason journalists will drive toward a hurricane, fire or a meth lab/munitions storage on fire (true story). Journalists will consciously put themselves in some of the most dangerous situations if it means being the first to cover breaking news. There’s always the chance the story the journalist is running toward is a major event like a foiled terrorist attack. There’s also a chance that the breaking news turns out to be a cat stuck in a pipe – also a true story.
After breaking the story and after the adrenaline goes away, journalists settle back into their regular routine, rewriting press releases and leaving yet another message to the school superintendent. But it’s those times of breaking news that remind journalists why they became journalists.
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