Tuesday, February 25, 2003 "I'd rather shovel shit in hell.
I just read Helen's column on journalism, and I laughed myself stupid right here in the computer lab. I've blogged before on how I got into "journalism," but I really don't think I've talked enough shit.
I hate news writing, first and foremost because of how deceptively easy it seems to be. The same stupid-ass pat phrases that hacks like me have been using since the mauve decade ooze onto the page before I can stop them. I know who to ask what questions to get the same weak-ankled "A good time was had by all" responses from the parade marshall or the lecture attendee, or the burn-scarred fire chief. Cutesy leads (a word I refuse to spell any other way) occur to me as naturally as breathing. I've come up with kickers so sugary as to send both my readers into a diabetic coma.
You think I'm joking? In my first assigned article for the Podunk Weekly, where I had a summer-long internship, I had to visit a nursing home for a woman's 104th birthday. They wheel out this poor, cloudy-eyed old thing with claw-hands and a drooling problem, and I have to decode her mutterings into quotes.
It is more depressing and scary as it sounds.
I trotted back to the office and wrote. In my article, the birthday party became a real celebration rather than a puzzling ordeal. The hulk tossed folksy remembrances my way, and then salivated, not because she couldn't help it, but because she gave a shit about eating the cake the attendants were putting in front of her.
I ended the piece with something like "after 104 years of life experience, Fanny Mae Hogswallop was faced with another difficult decision: Should she eat the chocolate cake, or the vanilla?"
This is what happens to me when I pretend to be a journalist. When you write this way, you can do a story in your sleep. I know I can do better, but then I start thinking, "why?" Judging by the letters to the editor I had to type up, the Weekly's readership was composed exclusive of the sub-literate and the senile. (My favorite line from a letter to the editor was "Our son---was born with no forearms and personality plus!")
The editor gave my cell phone number to one of our most persistent cranks, and she called me for months wondering when I was going to interview her about her town, which is the worst place I've ever been to. That's another blog.
I feel myself getting all excercised, but let me just say, this "novel" crap better work out. Otherwise, I'm getting my bindlestiff and lightin' out for Californy to seek my fortune as a prospector's burro. News writing is not for me.
posted by Frenz | 2/25/2003 02:12:00 PM
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