What is a newsman? What kind of man can encapsulate the full scope of world and local news, and still eat and drink enough to stay "alive"? I'll tell you:
A newsman takes care of his appetites. He doesn't worry about the politics of them, he just quells them before reporting. If a newsman does drugs, you can assume he has already done them before his job. If he has a significant other, he's already fucked them. This is a nice reversal of the "work before pleasure" mantra, because for a newsman it's pleasure before work, for works sake. Who can do a serious job with the possibility of future pleasure clouding their thoughts?
A newsman is in the now. Less effective ones will dissect the past and speculate on the future. But in doing so they have changed themselves from newsmen to historians or idiots, respectively. When you ask a newsman what's going on, you get an overloaded earful. Despite any other distractions, a newsman is primarily focused on awareness.
A newsman doesn't "get obliterated" in any sense of the term. He doesn't kill a liter of vodka in short order(unless he's reporting on vodka), he doesn't watch mind-numbing television, and he doesn't "just chat" with other people. He is fully aware of his surroundings, time in history, purpose, and physical condition at the given moment. He is here to live.
A newsman doesn't have friends. At least, he doesn't have friends that are ill-conducive to news reporting. Among the group of people he voluntarily shares his time with, at any moment he could say "time for an update" and everyone surrounding him would cease what they are doing and help create one. He doesn't have friends he could talk to about personal matters, because to him there is no such thing.
A newsman is compulsive about news. It is like the earth breathing for him, and who is going to send our planet into a respiratory arrest for their own comfort? All things must be dropped in the face of breaking news, including putting on clothing and talking a friend down from suicide.
A newsman completes his report. Anyone who exclaims "there's shit going down!" and doesn't follow-through is as useful as an alarm clock that goes off every minute. Of course there's shit going down, there always is. Instead, the newsman knows that the news isn't finished until the general public is pushed into a state of anxiety because of it. This happens when the report is finished and broadcast, and not a moment before.
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