Glamour
Together with prostitution, a trade with which it shares more than a few characteristics, journalism must be the most over-hyped profession. For some reason, most people seem to regard it as inherently glamorous, something I’ve never understood.
Maybe because I hail from a journalists’ family?
The practice of reporting and editing is inherently unglamorous, as far as I’m concerned. You make a bunch of phone calls, read up on the internet, and the rest of your work is to sit in front of your computer and draft your story. What’s glamorous about that?
Okay, every once in a while, if you’re a big shot, you get to interview a head of state or a movie star (neither of which seems to be particularly exciting, by the way). Or, you travel in exotic places with bullets flying around your head.
Great things to brag about to your buddies, but not so great to go through. And if your buddies are reporters themselves, they’ll know it’s all bull.
I suspect the appeal of the journalist (I even hate the word — you’re either a reporter, or an editor, or a critic, or maybe a columnist) lies elsewhere. It’s one of only a handful of jobs that combines a high-prestige art — in this case, writing — with a regular income. The others that come to mind are theater directors (unless their freelance) and conductors — the sort of conductor that wields a baton, not the sort that takes your ticket on the tram.
Liking sentences. Getting paid to make same. You got it.
Comment by Doug — January 25, 2005 @ 3:37 pm
You make a bunch of phone calls, read up on the internet, and the rest of your work is to sit in front of your computer and draft your story. What’s glamorous about that?
To us: nothing.
To somebody outside: everything.
Anything on TV, the web, the radio or in newspaper - anything that gains larger public attention is magic to those who don’t know better and who don’t think.
Whenever somebody calls me to ask whether I would like to do an interview with this and this popstar I just think “gee, not again someone who could almost be my son or daughter”.
But you know what’s really great about this job? Once in a while you get to speak to people whom you wouldn’t have met otherwise.
Greetings
novala
Comment by novala — February 9, 2005 @ 9:36 pm