Covered by the media morphs into stalked by the media

Canada Free Press ^ | 05/23/16 | Judi McLeod

[Sean_Anthony]

Reporting the news in 2016 has not only come a long way, it’s gone down a long way--all the way down to the bottom of the cess pool

My first dreaded errand as a rookie reporter back in my long ago days as a print journalist was to fetch a photograph from the relatives of of a high school youngster who had been found face down in a creek one month before his never-to-be graduation day.

This was one of the editor-imposed duties for new reporters working the weekend shift.

Special: [ALERT] Your Public Data Is Posted Online For All To See --->View Editors back in those days used photo pick-ups of those lost to tragedy as a means of what they called “separating the wheat from the ch

[wbarmy]

Every job in the world has the newbie jobs which are used to humiliate and test the new workers to see if they can handle the pressure.

As a new squid, I had to take samples of the oil as F-4s were doing the turn around on the flight line. Nasty, hot and usually dangerous, it was the skunk job for all new people on the line. You always got a shot of operating temperature oil on an unprotected piece of flesh and got a nice mark to show off later. I still have the darkened spot on my wrist where the oil hit.

Different jobs, different newbie job.

[IronJack]

Newbie reporters used to be assigned the more boring "beats," like the School Board or the County Commission. Venues where exciting things rarely happened. Then you'd move up to the Police blotter and the City Council -- still not exactly stimulating but a little more exciting than well permits or funding for pencil sharpeners.

The cream of the cush jobs was writing "features," which allowed you to think of your own stories, chase them however you chose, and put a lot of yourself into them. They really blurred the line between "reporting" and "creating," but gave a journalist freedom to fly.

That has now become freedom to lie.