Taylor Lorenz says she has "severe PTSD" from being a journalist

[Vombatus]

I do it all the time for features. We have a bi-monthly magazine that we publish in addition to the paper and I'm usually tasked with one feature for it. It's often the type of story that benefits from a long-form interview and pictures that are better taken at their house because of the subject matter.
I also had a football coach who told me to come to his house after a game. I was leaving one game, he'd already left his, and his house was on my way back to the office so if I had a few extra minutes on deadline it was easier to stop in for 10 minutes and get everything I needed.

As far as an ambush interview like this, though? Only done it once.
We had an old football coach who decided he'd had enough of this shirt and turned in his letter of resignation at 10 a.m. on a Friday. His team had a road game at 7 p.m. We got word of it around 1 or 2 p.m. I tried calling him several times and got no answer. A couple of times I zoned out, expecting the machine to pick up, and it must have rang 20 times before I gave up.
One of our news reporters was his neighbor, and when he left for the day around 4 I asked him to call if he saw the guy was home. The coach was at home and it was almost time for me to leave to cover the game, so with no time left I went to his house and knocked on his door. He answered and we did the interview.
His first words to me, though, were, "Why did you let that damn phone ring so long!?"

Because I'm Batman!

 

[Webster]

It's classic deflection by the right wing outrage machine. Awful person says awful things. Response is — how dare you dox her? Does the radical left have no shame?

 

[franticscribe]

I don't think I would call it PTSD, but years of covering crime definitely left a mark on my psyche.

I once arrived at a gruesome crime scene very soon after police got the dispatch and saw up close a decapitated prostitute. Occasionally the image of her sitting upright and headless in the cab of a pickup just randomly pops up in my mind.

There are other traumas, too, like the smell of burning human flesh that come back from time to time. I stopped working as a journalist in 2007.

 

[Bu77ers]

It's a bit more than that.

Those freaks that LibsofTikTok "doxxes" are doing a good job of sound like freaks on their own.

 

[MisterCreosote]

I don't think I would call it PTSD, but years of covering crime definitely left a mark on my psyche.

I once arrived at a gruesome crime scene very soon after police got the dispatch and saw up close a decapitated prostitute. Occasionally the image of her sitting upright and headless in the cab of a pickup just randomly pops up in my mind.

There are other traumas, too, like the smell of burning human flesh that come back from time to time. I stopped working as a journalist in 2007.

Yep. I could've written this post almost word for word.

I covered a homicide in which a daughter shot her father. I got to the scene and the father was sitting in his chair, dead, cigarette still in his hand.

Had to write on a 1-month-old who was killed by his uncle. Or the 19-year-old who was found after years of starvation and neglect by his adopted "parents."

I don't know what the term is for it, but it's definitely haunting. Still. And I'm 13 years removed from the business.

 

[Azrael]

I don't think I would call it PTSD, but years of covering crime definitely left a mark on my psyche.

I once arrived at a gruesome crime scene very soon after police got the dispatch and saw up close a decapitated prostitute. Occasionally the image of her sitting upright and headless in the cab of a pickup just randomly pops up in my mind.

There are other traumas, too, like the smell of burning human flesh that come back from time to time. I stopped working as a journalist in 2007.

Yep. I could've written this post almost word for word.

I covered a homicide in which a daughter shot her father. I got to the scene and the father was sitting in his chair, dead, cigarette still in his hand.

Had to write on a 1-month-old who was killed by his uncle. Or the 19-year-old who was found after years of starvation and neglect by his adopted "parents."

I don't know what the term is for it, but it's definitely haunting. Still. And I'm 13 years removed from the business.

When I started, nearly 50 years ago, I was on call for overnight cops and fire and rescue in a major market NBC affiliate newsroom.

I saw some awful things. Awful things.

I see them still.

 

[garrow]

 

[Sports Barf]

She didn't deny the doxxing part…

 

[Sam Mills 51]

It's classic deflection by the right wing outrage machine. Awful person says awful things. Response is — how dare you dox her? Does the radical left have no shame?

Deflection … projection … wash, rinse, repeat …

 

[Azrael]

Bigot? Isn't she mostly just aggregating and reposting TikTok videos with little or no commentary? How is just showing someone's lunacy in their own words bigoted?

There's plenty of editorializing . . . and misrepresentation.

 

[SixToe]

I don't know what the term is for it, but it's definitely haunting. Still. And I'm 13 years removed from the business.

The term is PTSD.

You and anyone else who has sustained this kind of repetitive psychological trauma that keeps showing up years later should find someone to talk with, other than on this board. A professional. Therapist, pastor, priest, someone.

 

[DanOregon]

It's kind of funny, but I had a "rough patch" as a journo - covering a lot of death, funerals - I pitched my editors on some stories about grief, and grief counseling. Probably mostly for my own psyche, but I talked to people with the police who do death notifications, the military and how they did what they did. Did a story on a camp for kids dealing with grief. It helped a lot. But watching kids learning how to channel their grief of a lost parent or other loved was one of the most emotional days I had as a journalist.