maarmie's musings

Saturday, May 31, 2008

In print once again

The Courier printed my letter yesterday. The original letter can be found in the previous post. As you can see, the editor chopped to a third its original length. What? They couldn't give me a half a page? Cretins!

It feels good to be in print again, I must admit. I miss being a journalist sometimes, but it's such hard, thankless work I don't think I'd ever actually attempt it again.

Being a reporter sapped all my strength every day and took quite an emotional toll after a while. Given that I view newspapers as vehicles to keep those who would harm others on the straight and narrow and that I view reporters as watchdogs against bad people who take advantage of those less fortunate/powerful, etc., I got really wrapped up in "exposing the bad guy" and hoping that the exposure would in some way bring justice. It never did, though, and I ended up feeling like I was writing all those articles and creating all those enemies for no reason at all.

Sucks to be on the sidelines all the time, writing about lives that other people were actually living as well. I hope, now, that I will get on and do lots of things that are newsworthy. Maybe someone will end up wanting to write about my life, instead.

By the way, I have only gotten one e-mail so far from someone who hates littering as much as I do. Hopefully that one can turn into several or many.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A shame they cut so much of it; wonderful, though, that they did print it.
Every time A. sees litter on the ground, she says, "Mommy! Somebody was being a litterbug! We don't throw our garbage on the ground." My mother-in-law taught her that, and ever since, littering has greatly annoyed my dear little A. Hee hee.
She still asks about you all the time, btw.
--JA