Shell-shocked...

It sucks. Those stories are tragic and sad. But they have to be covered. I say this as a colleague, with all sympathy to your feelings, but if this is upsetting you this much, maybe features should in your future.

 

precisely what caused me to bolt from news to sports oh so many years ago. as often as it carries over to the sports world more often than ever these days, the sports department is still where its at to escape from the realities of life and celebrate achievements.

 

Yep, those were always the highlight of my day, too. I found (and this is by no means scientific) that black families always talked, and white families invariably didn't.

I started out in sports, went to news because I wanted to be taken seriously, and then went back to sports because there are no murder-suicides -- by and large.

 

This thread reminded me of an SI story on Max Kellerman and his brother Sam, specifically the quote below.

The whole article is a good read. Here's the link
http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1110693/3/index.htm

"Once, debating why man had invented sports, Sam unloaded this haymaker: "Sports is man's joke on God, Max. You see, God says to man, 'I've created a universe where it seems like everything matters, where you'll have to grapple with life and death and in the end you'll die anyway, and it won't really matter.' So man says to God, 'Oh, yeah? Within your universe we're going to create a sub-universe called sports, one that absolutely doesn't matter, and we'll follow everything that happens in it as if it were life and death.'" Which delighted Max, because he craved a foil, someone who would compel him to hurl ever bigger and heavier numbers."

 

I'm with you Rosie. Many here know I was forced onto the news side of things when layoffs struck my shop.

I thought I'd like it. I thought I'd like the change of pace. And, like you, I drew two deaths off the bat. A couple drug busts. One murder. An environmental controversy. Half the subjects of the stories are complete dicks and scum. The other half of the subjects of the same stories are complete whack jobs.

Then, the "good stories" are just PR pieces or fluff that I can't even care about.

I'm so sick of this job - and I've been doing it for just four months.

 

my "last-straw moment" was when i had to call a gang member's family after he was gunned down. per usual, i was amazed when the mom gave me a few minutes on the phone to talk about her boy.

i got off the phone and told the city editor about the convo. his response was, "did you ask her about blah blah blah?"

startled, i muttered no.

"call her back," the ed said.

i returned to my desk, knowing this would NOT be my columbo moment to say, "um, one more thing, mrs. smith."

so i made like i was calling her. about a dozen times in the next half- hour. then told the ed the operator said the phone was off the hook.

i wrote the story, went right into the sports dept. and pleaded with the sports ed to push up his efforts to bring me into the toy dept. this was in oct. of '81. in jan. of '82, i was covering college hoops and never looked back.