Learn To Fly

I'm pretty sure I'm on the wrong timezone.

When I was a kid, my Mom tried everything to get me to go to bed at a regular time. She'd be heading to bed at the same time and tell me that she'd race me in painting a rainbow in my head. She probably figured that by thinking about painting a rainbow, I'd stop thinking about every other thing on the planet and fall asleep.

But I can't say any of it worked. Pretty much since I was a kid, my internal clock has been off. What's even weirder is that the world makes more sense to me at night than at any other time. It's when I do my best thinking.

I've always cared about what's going on in the world, and I've always wanted to make sense of it all. That's one of the reasons why I want to be a journalist, although more and more everyday I wonder if I'll actually be able to make sense of some things in the world for people.

A few years ago, I thought I wouldn't have a hard time being detached from stories I'd write about as a journalist. Of course, I didn't really know anything about journalism (arguably, although I know more now, my knowledge is still very limited).

Writing about the death of someone would be easy because I had no attachment to them, so I thought. I told my Mom that I wanted to report in the Middle East, and I'd be OK with war reporting. After all, it was the constant news coverage of 9/11 that first drew me into the excitment of journalism and reporting.

Now I feel like a bigger problem is detaching myself from stories.

I think to some degree I still can. I'm a bit morbid as a news junkie, I suppose. Some people avoid reading articles that upset them, but I can read about murders, tragic fires and war deaths. Can I write about them?

Can I write about someone who is homeless dying from the cold? My instinct is to write about what wasn't done to protect the person, but sometimes all that's necessary is the basic laying out of facts. The W's.

Poverty is something that I'm pretty passionate about. When I write stories about poverty, I think it comes through that it's something that I care about. With that said, I have a lot of opinions on social policy. Sometimes, I wonder if it's good to be passionate about topics as a journalist or not.

Am I able to write about things I'm passionate about without bypassing that shield of neutrality?

Certainly, when I take on a story that I am passionate about, I become more determined in writing the story. I'm pushing myself to find that determination with every story. But does every story need to evoke emotion in the reader?

Michael Harris offered a lecture at STU this fall about the Donald Marshall story. For anyone unfamiliar with the story, Marshall was convicted for a murder he did not commit. Although he was exonerated, repayment for the years he served in prison and what he endured was never given to him by the provincial government of Nova Scotia, nor the federal government. Even after being declared innocent, Marshall was treated like a criminal.

Harris, a highly-respected Canadian journalist, took on Marshall's story and got to know him well. He told the audience that most journalists have a sense of "helping people who really can't afford it."

After hearing that I thought, well yeah, that's why I want to be a journalist. Journalists are often displayed on TV shows and in movies as being willing to exploit people during times of tragedy. But is that really true of most journalists? Or are most journalists motivated to report by a sense of helping people, like Harris suggests?

As I delve more into journalism and learn more about why I want to be a journalist, I hope these questions will answer themselves. I'm learning a bit everyday, I guess.

The only thing about journalism that I am certain of is that more I learn, the more I become sure that it's what I want to do, but also I become aware of how difficult it is to be a journalist.

Just one thing running through my brain at 3am.

Learn to Fly - Foo Fighters