Stuff Journalists Like – #93 Newsroom Souvenirs

Save for the rare exceptions, most journalists don’t stay at one job for their entire careers. Like an unwanted redheaded child and orphanages, journalists bounce from newsroom to newsroom.  When leaving a job, journalists have a habit of walking away with some souvenirs from the newsroom.  Maybe a newspaper coffee cup from the break room, or their nameplate or stapler from their desk,  business cards,  reporter notebooks, a pager, a police scanner, or perhaps the couch from their college newspaper – just the little things to remember their times at the newspaper.

For most, past jobs are just bullet points on a resume but for journalists, past jobs are what make them what they are now. Also, they explain the drinking problem and the extra 15 pounds. There’s lots of reasons why journalist keep those coffee-stained newsroom coffee mugs and hideous sweaters with the newspaper logo.

Journalists keep things from their past jobs like  someone who keeps mementos of an ex-lover they can’t get over. Journalists also collect so many souvenirs from work because a journalist’s salary usually does not allow for the finer things in life like buying household items.  With enough newspaper jobs, a journalist can furnish his one-bedroom apartment in the bad part of town with his newsroom collection.

But the real reason why journalists keep these things is because they spend more time in a newsroom then they do at home. Journalists spend so much time at work that their actual homes become their second home. When looking back, some people remember where they were living, who was president, or how old their kids were. But for journalists, they remember which newspaper there were at and newsroom souvenirs remind them of the good, bad, and that time they spent nine hours at the city landfill for a story that was cut to 300 words.  Time to refill that newspaper coffee mug with gin.

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list of things journalists like