Think that j-school degree and a desk in a newsroom is all you need to call yourself a journalist? Think again. Journalists are made on deadlines. Here’s my checklist to see if you are truly a journalist.
- Written a 15-inch story in 30 minutes
- Corrected a loved one’s grammar in a greeting card
- Replaced one of the major food groups with coffee
- Own your own police scanner
- Eat in your car more often than you do at a table
- Gotten fired/laid off for no good reason
- Forgotten what it’s like to have the weekend off
- Can no longer read a newspaper without scanning for typos and errors
- Learned that being told to “fuck off “ and “go to hell” is part of the job
- Woke in a cold sweat thinking you forgot to change the date on A1
- Spend your down time coming up with the perfect lede
- Slept in your car and not because you were too drunk to drive home
- Found that fine line between harassment and persistence
- If you needed bail, the first person you would call would be your editor
- You analyze city council meetings the way sportscasters break down Monday night football
- You think it’s normal to work 16 hours a day for 8 hours pay
- Have conducted a phone interview while completely naked
- Can write an entire interview on a cocktail napkin
- Threatened to quit over an editorial decision
- You couldn’t imagine doing anything else
15-19 were recommended by readers on Twitter, Facebook, and the comment section. Thanks everyone!
Topics:
checklist for being a real journalist, The Bad Side Of Being A Journalist, I\m journalist, being a journalist
Metal pica poles. Good back scratchers.
Yes, they are!
But gently. I learned that one the hard way.
Here’s one more to add to the list. You are truly a real journalist if: you’ve filed a story bedside in the hospital where your wife was in labour.
True story. I was working the early morning shift during an era when we had five daily editions. The day before I had a long shift and didn’t finish one of my stories. My wife’s labour came on early. We went to the hospital, but during the wait and riding out contractions, had time to file for one of the later editions. A story was born and so was my daughter.
I’m the editor of a small daily in southcentral Pa. The other day I got called motherfucker twice in one day. Once it was by a the mother of a small child whose picture we took at a Salvation Army breakfast with Santa but did not choose to run. The other was by somebody who had called to complain that the type was too small on the church briefs. That night, I told my wife about it. She said that in her 30 years as a health-education administrator, she’s never heard the F-word uttered.
Paul, I can so relate. Twenty-eight years ago today, having started a small Texas daily just a week before, the editor called me the F word and then a string of obscenities, essentially because I didn’t want to get him a cup of coffee. At the holiday party that night, the staff already knew the scoop. I’d called my mom that night and told her I might be home for Christmas after all. :0}
Sometimes, we have to take things in stride I think. A few days, ago, someone mistook me to be a student and I had to bang on the official’s table to prove that I was actually a senior reporter of a reputed paper in India. And then he got even more mad at me. So, I guess, we just make people mad..
#10 – DEFINITELY.
Also:
• You analyze city council meetings the way sportscasters break down Monday night football.
You’ve every gotten into a long or heated discussion over the use of punctuation, spelling or word definitions.
ugh: *ever*
BTW, No. 6 should be “laid off.”
How about?
You think it’s normal to work 16 hours a day for 8 hours pay, and you’re in fear of losing your job while on vacation or maternity leave.
Have to change the radio station every time Sting’s “If You Love Someone, Set Them Free” comes on because there’s a disagreement between the indefinite pronoun and its antecedent.
Ha!
In honor of Mark, we could add No. 21: You know what an antecedent is.
Sounds like a few copy desks I’ve known. And all the while the “disagreement” plays out, the fingers are tapping rapidly on keyboards and the faces rarely look up. The real show must go on.
LOL but true!
oh man. no. 16 is especially true….alas…
I wish there were more about broadcast journalists. Like turning a 130 page city audit into a 1:30 package with no sots or b-roll…in under 2 hours.
have a bag with the following items in the trunk of my car at all times: notebooks, pens, pencils, batteries, baby wipes, cliff bars, bottle of water, clean pair of underwear.
Took my dog to a crime scene to guard my car in the getto at 3 in the morning.
OMG, after 20 years as writer and editor of dailies, these are too true!
Great topic and comments. I didn’t know how important cussing appears to be in the newsroom. If I’m ever interviewed I’ll make sure to start off by addressing the journalist as “mother fucker”.
Love it!
Funny, but I can’t help noting that this list skewed toward newspaper reporting is illustrated with a photo of Edward R. Murrow.
Yep, all but four of them. (not telling which ones)
You forgot “didn’t get promoted/the big story/a raise because the boss (who can barely spell his own name) hired a “new guy” with no experience at an exhorbitant salary.
SOOOOOOOOO TRUE! Those fresh out of college little punks who can’t spell or use consistent verb forms “editing” a seasoned columnist’s piece….then telling the editor the seasoned columnist should be fired. Huh?
HAHA!! TOO TRUE! I am so sick of these out of college kids coming in and thinking they know all the answers and they are entitled. Cannot stand them!
Boo hoo, you crusty old barnacles.
All but a couple of these apply. Guess that means I’m a real journalist. Thanks for the laugh.
Nice piece, but it’s “lead” not “lede”
http://howardowens.com/2011/09/18/lede-vs-lead/
Awww, c’mon! Oh, OK, I’ll read your piece, Howard.
Good piece, Howard, but, as you speculate re: the romantic linotypists, our language evolves. I wonder who came up with “graf?”
I think that was intentional
finally….
Actually, it’s “lede.” It’s old school, from the days when newspapers had hot type, as to distinguish the first paragraph of a story from “lead” type.
Edward R. Murrow believed smoking four packs a day was also key . . . of course, he died at age 57.
Slept in the office or the conference room. And now that I’m a journalism professor, I can say that many of these are eerily similar to teaching in a university.
I was just thinking the other day about all the journalism skill I have that is no longer needed, such as counting headlines, how to use a proportion wheel, cutting ruby lith, et cetera. Awww, the good ole days.
Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. On so many counts. I’m no longer a reporter, but I am still a “real” journalist. Loved this. So much of it rings true.
I’ve suffered all but two of the “15 things” list: I’ve never been laid off or fired from a newspaper job (although I was fired from virtually every other job I’ve held), and I never woke in a cold sweat worrying about changing the A1 date (because I’ve never been an editor), although I have woken many times in a cold sweat fearful I forgot to make a fix in a story or got someone’s name wrong.
At one point in your career you’ve had to choose between possibly getting arrested or possibly getting reamed out in front of the entire newsroom…and you’ve chosen the first one
Journalistic high point: meeting an FBI agent at midnight on a Monterey street to get the first mug shot of “General Cinque” of the SLA during the Patty Hearst kidnapping.
During a phone interview, told a congressional candidate you had another urgent call you had to take for just one minute so you could run into the bathroom to pee.
I watched in horror and glee as a co-worker did that.
Perhaps you could add – Have heard “I could do your job” at least once a week for your enitire career. Twice, if you cover sports.
If you’ve ever been told by your managing editor….”We don’t get sick around here. Ever. News happens all the time.”
And the whole personal insults and cussing stuff? Just because it’s common doesn’t make it right. Not that I don’t have a potty mouth–I just don’t use it to insult colleagues (in person).
‘Guilty’ of all those, yet I am not a journo. But yeah, you can’t be a journalist and not experience those things.
like this one .. it is like being a real journo … hehe
Filed – THEN gone to the ER.
I always thought I’d be damaged on the way to a story or by a cop trying to stop me from getting the news. Na … 26 years in newspapering and, in 1999, at an Army/Air Force Dog-and-Pony show, I was knocked out of the game – or any other – forever – by a one-man-band* who decided to set up his stepladder behind me in the print-only area. Guy hauled his own weight in TV gear up to the top, then toppled, surviving and saving his gear by smashing the end of a looong telephoto on top of my head – repeatedly.
Ended up with a chunk of titanium in my neck, torn nerves all over my right side and the inability to type for more than 15 minutes a day – on a good day – before the pain cut in. Insurance co. doctor who cut me off a med the manufacturer says should be withdrawn over at least six weeks cuts me off with a half-dose for one, then zip – leading to a gran mal seizure and a broken thoracic vertebra.
My last day on the job: I’m taking down an assignment, after taking the biggest dose of pain killers you can take and drive (totally ineffective, too) when I fall to the floor in agony – city editor looks down and says “that’s the trouble with you, I just can’t rely on you.” Fortunately for him, I couldn’t retaliate.
The NEXT hearing on my disability case comes up in February.
(for those of you too young to remember the sound of an RO-19 Teletype sending over a 10-bell flash: “One-Man Band” – single-person TV ‘crew’: this one was carrying the longest c-mount telephoto I’ve ever seen, bolted to the usual heavy-steel-encased Ikki* head and a Sony BetaCam recorder, all on a shoulder-mount, running off battery belt, with sound gear, etc. sticking off anywhere it can be stuck. It probably outweighed him.)
(for those of you who think a top-of-the-line HDMI camcorder weighs about a pound and a half, Ikigami used to make the best analog video camera you could barely carry- when attached to an industry-standard Sony, the best recorder in the field – total wight, properly outfitted, @120 lbs.).
when i’m good i’m good when bad i’m better
I was all in down to #20. That’s why I’m an ex journalist.
Oh so true, down to the nude interview and all. But is it my fault people call back right when you’re getting out of the shower?!?
Done an interview naked… at home, having got out of the shower and the phone rang. I think it was a copper and the story made the splash. Never revealed I was starkers as I wrote the notes down in my pad.
As for the “fuck off” – definitely… invariably by detectives or council press officers!
Getting a trio of “meals” to keep in the car, like fig newtons, pop tarts and oreos, because you know that in the next 4 months you are going to need them.
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If you’re a sports writer, you have to explain to people that you can file a 650-word column 10 minutes after a game is over by writing in reverse, with the lede the last thing written.
Huh?
That “huh” was in response to some coding that’s since been deleted. I concur with what Jim posted. I’ve done it many times with trial and election stories.
#2 and #8 are occupational hazards of being an English teacher!