Published: May 02, 2008 11:06 am            

Falling in love with news ‘one headline at a time’

I don’t know when exactly I fell in love with telling other people’s stories.

It certainly wasn’t the night a fire, a fatality, a smudged photo negative, a contrary computer and a deadline broken beyond repair initiated me into the life of fast-breaking news and faster-changing front pages.

It wasn’t the day this green copy editor learned that actually voting for president is far less stressful than figuring out how the rest of the nation voted and trying to tell the world — all ahead of the 1 a.m. mark that means the press rolls, no matter what.

And, it definitely didn’t happen just a few short days after Sept. 11, when a display on patriotic tattoos inadvertantly included a message that left faint-of-heart readers incensed over a word we didn’t mean to put in print but somehow still missed on the tattoo parlor wall.

Somewhere amid the craziness, the complaints, the sources and the daily deadlines, it happened all the same. There’s a lot about the news business that drives me nuts, but there’s more about it that just drives me.

Last Friday, Bluefield College paid tribute to those of us who hunger for headlines, chase leads and rearrange words to tell the stories that shape our lives. The Bluefield, Va., school graciously invited us to its beautiful campus for the ninth annual BC Media Appreciation Luncheon and gave us the opportunity to applaud Rachel Reed as an outstanding student and one of our own, CBS 59’s Alicia Suka, with the Shott Excellence in Media Awards.

As always, it was an enlightening experience and a delightful way to wile away time until the next story called. Most of us in attendance worked for small media — hometown newspapers, local broadcast affiliates and radio stations headquartered just up the street.

Our keynote speaker, however, traveled far and wide and said he still loves the business that had him at 10.

Bob Deans is currently a White House correspondent for Cox Newspapers, but he knew as a paper boy he wanted to be one of the names that would one day grace A-1.

“It’s really true that I fell in love with newspapers, as I say, one headline at a time,” Deans said, explaining he only had time to read one headline at a time in glimpses lit by headlights of passing cars on his dark delivery route.

To the young newspaper reader with an outlook untarnished by media scandals, public distrust and simple cynicism, the people behind the bylines became who he wanted to be.

“Nobody ever saw these people. They were completely self-directed, and they were infallible ... I said, ‘I want to be one of those people,’” he said.

As he spoke Friday, we all smiled, not so much at the humor as the irony of innocence.

Most of us are very familiar faces wherever we turn up in our small communities. We answer to a long line of higher powers, including each of you. And, though we’d like to forget it, we also know beyond the shadow of doubt that we make mistakes, and that everyone is reading, watching or listening when we misspell a headline, misspeak a name or just plain miss that naughty word on the tattoo parlor wall.

Yet, there’s still something inside that propels us to put the stories together and something in you that invites us into your homes and lives to tell the tales.

Perhaps its a thirst for knowledge, the need to know what’s happening to make educated decisions, hold officials’ feet to the fire and safeguard citizens with information.

Maybe it’s pure, unabashed nosiness and an inextricable human desire to find out what everyone else is doing.

And, part of the allure is probably pure entertainment, the delight that even as adults, there’s still someone out there willing to weave us a story and tell it whenever we want.

Whatever the attraction that keeps media in business and audiences subscribing and tuning in, Deans and Bluefield College reminded us all Friday that it takes a labor of love to shed light on situations, open minds to opportunities, touch lives with words and share knowledge with both the nation and neighbors.

Like any real love, it’s one that stands tough, even in the face of disaster, election nights with no winners and bad words accidentally printed in the buckle of the Bible Belt.

Tammie Toler is Princeton Times editor. Contact her at ttoler@ptonline.net.

        

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