2008-09-04

Journalism at its finest

As a wee lad growing up, I wanted to be a news reporter. I learned to read at a young age ... very young age. And since I grew up in the early 70's before cable TV and Cartoon Network, I loved the kids shows on PBS ... especially Seseme Street. Mostly for the Kermit News segments. I can remember sitting in my room with the newspaper reading and practicing for the day I would be at the anchor desk.

As I got older, I got into journalism. Eventually, I became a newspaper photographer, then they realized I was a much better writer than I was a photographer. And while working the news desk daily, I quickly learned how corrupt and misguided the business of news reporting is. Not the reporters, necessarily, but the business of how news is presented. History, it is said, is what happens; news is how one person views it and writes about it, then how it's edited, presented and, sadly, headlined by people who were nowhere near the event, did not discuss said event with anyone involved it the event, or even have any knowledge of the event. Which is often why what's written is so far away from what happened.

Every once in a while I'll read the kind of story that makes me get all sad about NOT being a reporter ... this is one of them. This is journalism at its finest. Kudos.

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