Writing for the love of the game

Getting to read articles in Editor & Publisher has been a great learning experience for me as of late. Today, in the May 2008 edition, I got absorbed in the "Going Mobile" article about mobile journalists. They work out of their cars most of the time, being on the go all day long instead of being in an office. As the article said, there are drawbacks. The main one being that you can't bounce ideas and whatnot off of someone if you aren't in a newsroom. And having someone there to help you with a story is always a wonderful and fulfilling experience.

Of course, I would love to be a mobile journalist for the simple fact that I wouldn't have to be in a newsroom all day and I could publish the information immediately onto a site or blog. We're in an age where we want the news as fast as we can get it and local news coverage for a town the size of Andalusia isn't every good. Sure, we make the news on a few rare occasions, but WSFA and WAKA aren't local stations to us. And our local stations are very poor indeed, if we still have them.

I was skimming the Editor & Publisher website for the link, which of course has to be paid for in the case of the mentioned article above, when I came across an article about journalism and how you have to pretty much do it for the love of it and not the money. Journalists, no matter how renowned or Pulitzer worthy, never get paid enough for the brilliant ideas they come up with.

Right now, I could toss out about three ideas that would more than likely be good and brilliant stories, but no one would ever go after them. So I might as well list them here.

The first one, involves much investigative reporting. The hospitals here are known for how badly they treat patients, so the article would surround finding out about those facts and how many of the doctors are under investigation or have pending lawsuits against them, as well as the hospital. I know it would be a great investigative peace, but there aren't any reporters here who would take the chance on that one. Not even me. The hospital pays this newspaper way too much money to go and air out all that dirty laundry.

The second one would be all the impending cases of sexual abuse. Of course we run stories on those all the time, but I would do a series here with the children in these cases. Let the community see these children if the parents will let it happen. And then do another piece on the pedophiles themselves, focusing on what drives them to do this to children and keep doing it until they are caught and incarcerated.

The third idea was an idea I had a while back, but no one took me up on it. I would do a series on each pre-school here in this town. Give an overall picture of how it is run and what kinds of things are different at each one. Parents would have a better knowledge of where they are sending their kids and what they are paying for when they do.

Watching shows like Smallville and movies like One Fine Day or Never Been Kissed have always been inspirational. Undercover reporting has always been something that I would love to do, but know I will never have the chance to do. I know it has to be a rush, getting the scoop and being there when something goes down. You have to have nerves of steel to do a job like that and just watching it on shows and movies makes me want to do something worth while to get that Pulitzer prize.