Spring Break
Column: Lives of journalists hinge on inappropriate behavior
Steve Markley
Issue date: 12/9/05 Section: OpEd Page
Part of an editorial editor's job is being able to handle those last second emergencies. For instance, when it's 8 p.m. on production night, and you realize none of your columnists have turned anything in. Or when you get your cleaning lady pregnant and she insists you keep the child because she's still trying to earn her citizenship (believe it or not, this has happened to me twice).
You learn to handle these things. You handle the emergencies, you handle the hate mail, you handle the random Facebook friends who are clearly trying to ride your wave of glory now that administrators aren't calling for you to be fired. The best way to do all of this is with unerring arrogance. I like to treat my column writing the same way 50 Cent treats his rapping: Just assume you're the best despite all evidence to the contrary. I assure you, however, that despite how you may feel about me from what you read in the paper, I am far worse in real life.
Anyhow, the point of this little impromptu column is to explain just how I got to be this way: a combination of working on the paper and my mother's heroin habit. You see, journalists are not regular people.
If you've ever seen Alexandra Pelosi's film Journeys with George about the press corps that followed then-Governor Bush around on his presidential campaign, you know what I'm talking about. These so-called journalists spend their entire time regurgitating Bush talking points and getting sloppy-drunk on airplanes.
I was glad to see that nothing changes when you move from a student newspaper to, say, The Washington Post. I'm guessing that newsrooms everywhere have times when they look like a scene out of Caligula.
After being hired at a staff party last year, I found out that there's more to news than just writing down so-called "facts" in an easily digestible format. I think someone yelled out as a joke, "Let's hire Markley for something!" And it just turned out the joke went a little too far.
You learn to handle these things. You handle the emergencies, you handle the hate mail, you handle the random Facebook friends who are clearly trying to ride your wave of glory now that administrators aren't calling for you to be fired. The best way to do all of this is with unerring arrogance. I like to treat my column writing the same way 50 Cent treats his rapping: Just assume you're the best despite all evidence to the contrary. I assure you, however, that despite how you may feel about me from what you read in the paper, I am far worse in real life.
Anyhow, the point of this little impromptu column is to explain just how I got to be this way: a combination of working on the paper and my mother's heroin habit. You see, journalists are not regular people.
If you've ever seen Alexandra Pelosi's film Journeys with George about the press corps that followed then-Governor Bush around on his presidential campaign, you know what I'm talking about. These so-called journalists spend their entire time regurgitating Bush talking points and getting sloppy-drunk on airplanes.
I was glad to see that nothing changes when you move from a student newspaper to, say, The Washington Post. I'm guessing that newsrooms everywhere have times when they look like a scene out of Caligula.
After being hired at a staff party last year, I found out that there's more to news than just writing down so-called "facts" in an easily digestible format. I think someone yelled out as a joke, "Let's hire Markley for something!" And it just turned out the joke went a little too far.
