Ziploc bags of humanity

Today is day six of Stacey's trip to Europe ... and I'm finally settling into her role. It's actually a blast from the past for me, just like my days at TDH in college. I spend all day sorting through press releases, reading the wire, writing and rewriting headlines, talking to reporters, choosing artwork, and -- of course -- honing stories into finely crafted works of art. :)

I really can't explain the rush it gives me. I tighten until a paragraph really pops. I reword phrases until they're smooth as butter. Writers can be an ungrateful lot -- authors more so than reporters -- but in the end, I've done my job if I've made them shine. That's all I can give, but I do it as best I can.

There are many days when I want to get out of the news business, possibly even giving up editing altogether. Why? Because there's no real power in my red pen (but don't tell the reporters that). Language isn't real; it's simply an agreement between two parties as to the nature of their environment. And Matt reminds me daily (usually when I correct him) that I am constrained by these rules, by the way things have to be. A comma here ... a capital letter there ... an exclamation point used only on the rarest occasion.

But it goes far beyond these semantics. Just like my current job duties, it goes back to my days at TDH, when I was taught to tuck my feelings into Ziploc bags and stuff them in my pocket. And I was one of the lucky ones -- I had the power to open those Ziploc bags and spill them onto the op-ed page when I felt like it. Not everyone has that opportunity.

Today, I received a press release from Andrea, one of the reporters I formerly managed Way Back When. I remember Andrea fondly -- a real whiz kid who knew how to sniff out a great story. Talented as all hell, too. More than once, I caught her crying in the newsroom after working on a story or talking to a source. I guess most people didn't get it, but I understood. There are times when it's absolutely overwhelming -- joy, sadness, anger, hurt. You sit on the sidelines, capitalizing on other people's lives ... then chew it up and spit it out at a fourth-grade reading level for a public that is only marginally interested. It's disheartening.

I found a commentary Andrea wrote while she was a Chips Quinn intern in Kentucky. "Caring is what separates a reporter from a mouthpiece," she says. "Write about what happened because it matters to someone."

That's exactly why I gave up writing years ago. What mattered to my sources mattered to me. I thought I'd be less emotionally involved on the rim, so that's where I went. But it's not much better there. A reporter might be deeply entrenched in telling the story of John Doe's murder. On the other hand, an editor reads about John Doe's murder AND Jane Doe's fatal car crash AND the governor's repeated infidelities AND the status of global war ... and a thousand other things that make you want to throw your hands up in the air and scream, "What the hell is wrong with this world?!"

I do care. I really do. Every day, the records of literally thousands of people pass by my desk. Some are going through happy times -- they're buying a house or getting married or starting a business. And some are going through bad times -- their house is in foreclosure or they've gone bankrupt or they're filing for divorce. It's easy to see it as just another day reading public records, but I try to remember that these are real people with real lives and real stories. I never want to get to the point where that's lost on me, where reading those names is just the means by which I get a paycheck.

Tomorrow morning, I'll come into the office. I'll open up my inbox and read through a half-dozen press releases from the Sheriff's Office about the overnight homicides. I'll glance through the public records, the court cases, the Associated Press and Reuters. Then I'll open up my Ziploc bag and tuck my feelings inside. Then I'll close up my bag and put it in my shirt pocket, right next to my red pen, so that humanity is close to my heart when I walk out this door and back into the real world.