Shattered Glass is one of the movies that HBO has on lately. If I catch it on, even halfway, I sit down and watch it through*. Partly because it is a fantastic movie, but mostly because my degree is in Communications and back in high school all I ever wanted to be was the editor of The New York Times. When I see a movie that deals with the topic, I am drawn to it. Which is why we went to see Good Night And Good Luck this weekend. Somewhere between being the Co-Executive Editor of my high school newspaper and graduating from the University of Washington it didn't quite work that way.
Purity was important to me back then. I wanted to be a newspaper writer who was pure, unscathed, unbuyable. Curing ills, righting wrongs, angelic, bionic, non-smoking, non-drinking. Thank god I got over that. Anyway, not to bore anyone, but the deregulation of the news industry** by Reagan (hey, thanks, dickhead) created a situation where just a handful of people owned the news printed around the world. AP and other wire services became a major portion of printed news. It's cheaper than paying each author. This killed a lot of local news and changed the slant of anything that was reported because the writers had to play to the owners desires and politics. I was too good for that. So since I gave up on my dream, I decided to pursue something similar that would get me a job at the end of college.
Public Relations. Talk about purity. Snort. I hated every minute. Around that time I started waiting tables to pay my way through college and it ended up being much more money, part time, than all my other friends who had starter jobs and full time hours.
But what if? Hell, I can't even write daily here. Could I have done that job? I don't have an answer and luckily I fell into a job that I truly love and fits my passion. Writing used to be my passion, though, what can I do to keep it a part of my life? And I mean more than just watching it on television.
*In high school I also watched Broadcast News about eight million times. These movies break my heart because there are characters in each film who are unsullied. Sorta hated, not many friends, but pure. They always had to blow the whistle on the charismatic, yet muddied, moral character. The kind of person who would never break a single ethical news rule. I wanted to be that person.
** Oh yes, the deregulation of the news industry in the '80s (that a company can own more than one newspaper, radio station, and television station in a single metro area, thereby creating a more monopoly-type situation) is a good part to blame for things like sensationalist journalism, and people like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.
Posted by kerewin at November 8, 2005 11:03 PM