Is what we do demeaning?

Damn. Cadet can string some words together. Well done, sweetheart!

 

Thank you, Cadet.
I really mean that.

 

That's it--that's what makes this business work. The belief that you're going to tell the story better than anyone else...knowing no one can tell it the way you can.

There's your answer, PulitzerW.

 

just fuckin' with ya, dog.

 

Thanks, guys. That hit me on the drive home last night and I realized it fit here.

The thing is, I do get down. Way down. I do feel demeaned, belittled, not taken seriously as a professional when my job is to interview kids (real kids, not Gundy-style kids). My family is still wondering when I'm going to get a "real" job. It's hard.

 

That was beautiful Cadet. Thank you for posting it.

 

I hope for Pulitzer Wannabe's sake that one day ... it may take a while ... but maybe one kid will walk up to him and say, 'Hey, man, you know that story you did on me? It was awesome, thanks.'

Because those are the days you know it's worth it.

 

I've certainly had people try to demean me, but it doesn't work. You have to have a right attitude. As many others have said on here, you have to be confident in yourself and what you're doing. If you're not, you either need a new newspaper or a new profession.

 

First of all, I agree, Cadet, that was good. And it's a good measuring stick for people asking questions like the one Pulitzer posed in this thread. If you still feel the things Cadet described, you're good.

But I think I understand what Pulitzer was getting at. There are the obvious things, like if you cover preps and you step back for a second and realize your entire professional life revolves around covering high school kids. And I don't know if demeaning is the right word, but maybe demoralizing would fit. I have felt that way when I deal with friends and family who don't get the mentality that leads people into the business.

Here's a perfect example ... my best friend, who I've known since I was 10, is a civil engineer, and he's never understood what drew me into sports journalism. I've always found it really tough to argue with him. The guy designs roads and bridges. I cover sports. You do the math. We live pretty close together now, but for a few years we lived about three hours apart and he'd often call me up and invite me to come to his place for the weekend, which, of course, was impossible. But I remember really questioning things when I had to explain to him the reason I couldn't come: I had a high school football game on Friday night and I had to work the desk on Saturday night. He was just baffled by the fact that I would take a job working nights and weekends for horse shit pay. He knew I didn't know anyone in the town where I was working -- like so many of us, I'd gone where there was a job, everything else be damned. And I remember him asking me "do you have any fun?" I remember him telling me he wouldn't be able to live like that.

Again, when you step back from it for a second you get a little perspective. I think my friend definitely helped me do that. To someone who hasn't spent years gearing themselves to be in this business, it sounds like a horrendously miserable existence. And it's all well and good to say "just ignore them if you know it's what you want to do." But these are your friends, your family, your potential significant other. It's awfully tough to sacrifice time with them on Saturday night so you can lay out the agate page or write a story that only matters to parents or fanboys. After a while, if you want a life that goes beyond that, it does get to feel demeaning. And you have to decide what's more important to you.

 

I really appreciate the posts on this topic, especially this last one from Hacker. It resonates with me. I'm feeling like if I stay with job, my world will be so narrow. I've been at three papers in the eight years I've been out of school and I've drifted from so many of my friends. More and more my friends are in the business, which is great but I don't want to exclusively have friends and relationships with just people in the business.

And I'm not sure I want to be married to someone in the business when I'm already married to it. It's one of those jobs (I'm a beat reporter) you just can't separate from your life. The long hours, nights and weekends and the demeaning crap that I fairly routinely have to deal with .... and oh yeah, the bad money ... seems like they are more and more outweighing the fun and exciting aspects of the job.

I'm starting to feel like if I don't love this job, why don't I just go get another job that I also don't love, something that's just fine. Maybe we're not supposed to "love" our work. It is afterall, in the end, work. And the real money is being made by someone else -- in my case, a huge corporation. I have a friend who just left for a job in internal communications at a large company. He works with words, he writes and edits -- so some components of the job are the same. Sure, he is writing stuff to convey his company's objectives but it's a company that does positive work. He gets nights and weekends off, benefits are great and he makes literally twice the amount of money and appears to have many opportunities to make even more.

I'm thinking about doing something similar. I'm not ready to give up on the fun and exciting parts of the job, though. I love being the person people look to for the real story about what happened. I love being in the know. I love being there. The whole backdrop of what's going on in our industry doesn't help either, though.

Anyway, I'm rambling on. Just wanted to share some thoughts.

 

cadet, would you mind pontificating? i bitch, whine and complain all the time ... you seldom do. please give us your thoughts on this, or at least PM them to me.

 

Then there's this: One friend of mine started his own company, mostly working for himself in the beginning doing (ugh) manual labor that I wouldn't have wanted to do. But he hired an employee or three, and now he manages his own business, reaping big profits, and has little hands-on contact with the grunt work. Meanwhile, I still do grunt work and am never going to "own" this company or even be top dog in office.

Another friend put in 30 years at a warehouse job but was able to retire with full pension and health benefits. Yeah, his 30 years weren't as "fun" as my past two decades. But starting tomorrow and every tomorrow after that, he can do whatever he wants with his days at a relatively young age and I'm doing what I did almost 20 years ago, because only real advancement in our business means giving up writing (the one thing that remains enjoyable to do). Won't retire for a while, either, with no traditional pension either.

Who works nights and weekends? Who lives someplace he wouldn't have chosen, aside from work? Who accomplishes little but chronicles deeds of others? Who gets squeezed from all sides, by both the folks we cover and the folks we break our backs for? One guess.

And that occasional kid who thanks you for a story, he probably would have appreciated you more as his English teacher or his college loan officer.