tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4640470443420164863.post2409778867964270992..comments2024-03-26T10:26:51.288-04:00Comments on Jim Leff's Slog: Pity the Reporters (Seriously)Jim Leffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00007232702717055047noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4640470443420164863.post-63073657301550773302012-12-16T12:43:14.083-05:002012-12-16T12:43:14.083-05:00Thanks for posting, Rogers.
I didn't mean to ...Thanks for posting, Rogers.<br /><br />I didn't mean to say that reporters hate reporting. They are, indeed, juiced and energized when events like this occur and they find themselves in a competitive scrum, trying to tie together pieces in fresh and insightful ways, be the first to ferret out sources, etc. That's what they do!<br /><br />But the specific act of actually confronting someone grieving and getting them to cough up nuggets.....that specific part I think most of them genuinely dislike, on a personal (not professional) level. <br /><br />An analogy would be those Daily Show field pieces where the reporters completely openly mock their subjects. Those guys are comedians, and they LIKE mockery, and they LIKE being on the Daily Show, and they LIKE making audiences laugh. But one reason for the high turnover there is that most of them are a bit horrified about having to do that to people, specifically, even though they love mocking in a general way, and love the overarching process of producing comedy for TV.<br /><br />Yeah, I got plenty of funeral director sanctimonious bullshit preambles (" I am sooooo sorry for your loss") and saw through it immediately. But at the actual moment of hooking, I perceived no suppressed relish, just a layer of personal embarrassment stoically wrapped around a much deeper level of burning desperation to fill the vacuum of info on these victims (if that desperation wasn't there, they wouldn't have been contacting someone like me who's essentially the victim's cousin's barber).<br /><br />Make more sense now that I clarified?Jim Leffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00007232702717055047noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4640470443420164863.post-18256662533135054822012-12-16T11:53:12.867-05:002012-12-16T11:53:12.867-05:00I'm a former newspaper reporter. I think you g...I'm a former newspaper reporter. I think you greatly overestimate how badly a reporter feels about the job he or she is tasked with doing.<br /><br />We love chasing stories and gaining the confidence of a source.<br /><br />Playing the "I'm sorry I have to do this" card is a standard tactic for winning somebody over.Rogers Cadenheadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18097110849260153515noreply@blogger.com