As if you need proof, it comes from Newscastic — “23 things EVERY journalist ABSOLUTELY LOVES”:
Reporter’s Notebook
/ Via Observer-Dispatch reporter Amanda FriesJournalists become packrats when it comes to reporter’s notebooks.
Police officers use reporter’s notebooks, because they fit perfectly into inside- or outside-jacket or back pockets. Indeed, a reporter’s notebook (about one-third the size of a spiral-bound notebook a student would use) is one of the greatest inventions in the history of printing.
There’s a name for a journalist who fails to meet deadlines: “unemployed.”
Lanyards
Journalists like lanyards because it lets them prominently display their press passes feeling special and important.
(They also work well for your children’s pool passes.)
Well, most. I don’t watch. To think millions of Americans get their news from a satirical news show should make actual journalists (which neither Stewart nor Stephen Colbert are) bang their heads against the wall.
Covering weather stories
Whether rain, wind, snow or sleet, there will be some poor khaki-clad journalist out there reporting on the weather.
Dan Rather got national attention covering the John F. Kennedy assassination, after he got national attention covering Hurricane Carla’s landfall in 1961.
Drinking
A good beer and a shot is just the medicine for any journalist who just survived another treacherous day in the trenches reporting the truth.
Said beer and shot now has to be consumed outside the office, because media companies frown on their employees’ drinking on the job, years after bottles of hard adult beverages could be found in newsrooms and editors’ desks.
“All The President’s Men”
It was the movie that launched a thousand journalism careers. The official movie of journalism.
Also, they’re cheap. I used to like nice pens. I would buy nice pens. And those nice pens would inevitably disappear never to be seen again.
McDouble
The food of choice for budget-conscious journalists on the go.
But you knew about the value of McDoubles. (Until the minimum wage is raised to stupid levels.)
The only way fedoras look good is with a suit and tie. Notice the model isn’t wearing a tie.
Going undercover
Yeah, right. While I have occasionally not identified myself as a journalist, I have never gone “undercover.” Most reporters are physical wimps, so that “feel[ing] like a spy” thing would last until actual physical danger occurred.
Because social media is merely another form of media.
Not with me, although he deserves credit for turning a book about police work into “Homicide: Life on the Street.”
(The AP Stylebook, for those unaware, is a book about terms and phrases to use and not use in print. The cool thing about lasting as long in print journalism as I have is that you get to decide what your publication’s stylebook is. I use the AP Stylebook, but modify it for local use — it seems repetitive to include “Wisconsin” in every mention of a location in Wisconsin — and to change such oddities as “adviser” when the rest of the English-speaking world uses “advisor.”)
Election Day Pizza
Election Day is a pillar of democracy. It also means free pizza in newsrooms across the country.
I’m still waiting for mine. Election Day is one long day, but you knew that.
Hate-watching “The Newsroom”
Because it’s about journalism, journalists are compelled to watch it, despite it being a piece of shit.
Though I don’t have HBO, on that, we agree.
Responding to readers’ emails
Journalists have $40,000 in college debt so any reader with an internet connect can tell them they don’t know shit about shit.
EditorsA good editor will threaten to quit to defend a journalist and threaten to fire the same journalist — all in a single day.
No editor has threatened to fire me, and I have not threatened to fire anyone. Yet.
Breaking News
The adrenaline journalists get from rushing out of the newsroom to get to the scene of breaking news almost makes the low pay worth it.
To quote football coach Bill Belichick, it is what it is.
Free food
Hosting a boring informative meeting, press conference or ribbon cutting ceremony? Not sure if anyone from the local paper is going to make?
To boost your odds of having a reporter show up have free food. Journalists like free food.
Well, duh.
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