The Art of Reporting on a World That’s Falling Apart
Never look at social media in the morning, and other sanity-preserving advice from a hyperlocal journalist
Try not to look at social media first thing in the morning. That’s probably terrible practice for a journalist, but to get through the rest of the day, news is off the table when you wake up. Good news, bad news: You don’t want any of it this early.
Save all that anger and worry for when you get into work. You want to bottle it up, shake it a little, and then pour it out on the messages left on social media — to use it as fuel, to power through the injustices. On a local level (and on a good day), that often means combing through messages from people asking you to report on trash cans left uncollected for weeks, nuisance neighbors, beloved pets gone missing, stolen work tools, or park vandalism.
On a bad day, your emails are stuffed full of police press releases detailing shootings, robberies, stabbings, stolen items of irreplaceable sentimental or material worth. Sometimes it’s missing person notices that morph into appeals, then into search parties.
The best days end with a police amendment stating that a person has been found, safe. The worst days end with a statement to the media asking that the…
