the newsroom

That sounds like one of those 1980s/1990s/1930s-era movies showing the scrappy, dedicated, world-weary reporters cynically speaking truth to power, while challenging, but ultimately winning the approval of hardened grumbly editors, and barking domineering publishers -- and, of course, getting the story right, hiccups and all.

In fact, the newsroom, my newsroom, is a conglomeration of smashed together desks, with computers and papers and phones all askew, stupid tangled wires that make it impossible to do anything technologically helpful at all, broken computers, shitty lights, random exclamations.

Every time I see the newsroom I think of my co-worker The Intrepid Reporter, not to be confused with other lower-case intrepid reporters, hopping up and down at his desk, with one hand on the computer, another waving about frantically, threatening the execution of his laptop and/or cell phone, while yelling about the magistrate of an arrested sex abuser, or government worker who tested positive for drugs, or the latest press release with a comment from the governor responding to comments from legislators to hit our email inbox.

So far, so stereotypical. Really stereotypical.

The panicky sound of heels -- so unnecessary in a newsroom of 10 people -- clacking clacking, for no other reason than to grind the stress into the ground as the deadline looms and the near hysteria of unusable quotes and unreturned phone calls disburse in waves around the reporters.

Intrepid Reporter returns flushed with pad in hand, pencil in ear. Overwhelmed not incredibly intrepid reporter with four pens in messy hair (like, insane person messy) puts head in hand, types, looks at computer with incredulous stare -- am I really doing this?

Phones ring. Ohmigod, it's like we all don't have voice mail and there's no secretary. (We do, and there is, and yet someone get the phone).

At 6 p.m. the news comes on and we tensely watch our (two) competitors, wondering if they got a story we didn't get.

Dear god, did they get an interview with the superintendent who didn't answer my phone calls about the middle school gym? Did the governor's special assistant give a comment about visa waivers we didn't get? What the hell? They have a story about an investigation into the sale of bath salts? Nooo.

Make phone calls. We'll just cover the basics, and do a folo tomorrow.

It's not even that it's not like it is in the movies. It is exactly what it's like in the movies -- shrill and panicked and self-important.

All of us the fluctuating white noise fading in and out, but never in tune, scrambling for the scoop, racing to get the latest press release up on an excruciatingly slow website seemingly designed to hasten aneurysms.

Having emerged from this seething cocoon and moved to the lifestyle desk (and then further removed to the empty special sections desk), I have spent the last few weeks watching from afar (10, maybe 20 feet) the self-impalement of the news reporters.

It's like watching a group of people on a trampoline in a closet, wondering why they keep hitting a wall.

Little eggs, sizzling on a pan we shouldn't have on high anyway.

My account may be amplifying the tension of what I can only assume is a fairly low-stakes newsroom. The New York Times we are not. But that sort of reinforces my point.


What the hell are we doing?


We are pantomiming a profession that seems more and more irrelevant -- because the world has changed and the huddled masses are no longer waiting for the belated dissemination of the next press release from our information center.

And even if we were in the golden age of the printed word -- what the hell are we doing?

Somewhat tired media analysis aside, it's just not a way to live.

There are bigger things.

And more humane ways of telling stories, which, at the very least, one can do on a blog sans trampoline.