That’s it

07Oct09

There are some moments when you stop and think, “That’s it. That’s why I’m doing this.”

I’d like to say that my most recent epiphany came from something profound, intellectual or otherwise respectable. But no. It came from watching a movie. Frankly, I’m just glad it wasn’t a commercial. Or worse, an infomercial.

Monday night, after a relatively long day at work, I came home and popped in “State of Play.” For those of you who don’t know, it’s a thriller based on DC political journalism. Well, technically it’s an adaptation of a British miniseries that the directors moved to DC for the silver screen — but I digress.

What really matters is that the movie is AWESOME. But that was not enough to inspire my lightbulb moment. Sure, it chronicles exactly what I would love to do with my career… be in DC, breaking a huge story — so huge that someone tries to kill me over it — and making my own bit of history.

That’s inspiring, make no mistake, but the facts are that I’m not working at a huge DC daily. I’m working at a small town daily, doing work that is just as important, only on a smaller, less glorified scale.

The moment that scoured any doubts about my life as a journalist from my mind was my reaction to the closing scene. None of the big-name actors are in it. There isn’t anything particularly dramatic about it. But it shows the story going to print, the newspapers being bundled and shipped out to hit the newsstands.

I was giddy, watching that. The very fact that it was so far removed from the Hollywood drama that proceeded it should have made it easier to turn off the DVD and move on to other things. But instead, I was glued to the set.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not particularly attached to print journalism as a rule. I love the smell of newsprint, but I’ve never had my own subscription to a paper. I spent most of my free time online, reading blogs about how journalism is changing and I’m excited for those changes.

So I stopped to think about why that scene hit me the way it did. And after much thought I’ve come to the conclusion that it was because I saw it as the literal meaning. It was the news getting out to the people.

That’s it. It’s why I do what I do, despite the urgings of many around me to look for a better paying job with more consistent hours. I want to find out all I can, distill it into the most pertinent information in the most easily understood language and send it out to people. I want to capture what is happening in this day in history and record it for all to see.

I’m sure this echoes something written by a thousand other people, especially with all the current talk of journalism being dead. I’ve probably written something similar already on this blog. But the reporter in me wanted to see this in print for myself. And maybe you’ll take something from it too.