I’m not one to get political. I have a tendency to silently give to charities. I observe and work behind the scenes.
That’s part of a job of a journalist. It’s something I believe in. Journalists are those who witness, who comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
For the past couple of decades that’s my role and I have beyond accepted it.
That doesn’t mean Scott, the average Gen X citizen with a wealth of experiences and years of observations, doesn’t have opinions. But as a journalist, we are told to keep those to ourselves. We don’t endorse causes. We don’t endorse candidates. We don’t endorse movements.
In Marvel Comics, there’s a race of beings like that. They are called the Watchers (and yes, they predate the ones you might have seen on Fringe). They swear an oath of non-interference. They merely record what happens. Solemn witnesses to history as it unfolds.
In the real world, we are called journalists.
In the past decade, that institution has withered away as readership and advertising have declined. Every week, you can’t help but hear of another group of journalists — sometimes your friends — either being cut from their careers, their passions or choosing it is time to move on.
In the coming week, while I’m involved in project at the Paragraph Factory, two of the people I’ve come to respect a lot will be the latest to move on. I will not be at their going away parties. I will not be present for the standing ovation as they leave the office for the last time. I was fortunate that one of them asked me to read her final column (which by the way weaves her departure, her raising of two beautiful daughters and the promise of a different future so well it brought tears to my eyes).
This is going to be my future for the foreseeable time. Saying farewell to friends. Wishing them well in their new endeavors. Trying to maintain contact with them via Facebook and hopefully having drinks with them from time to time.
All the while, it is imperative that I stay the course. It is my job to keep the ship moving forward. To try to find those things I can change along the way to make things better. That’s part of who I am. To do leave something better than when I got it.
And that’s why there’s a growing level of frustration as I look around and read things like this. When I realize that not everyone has been playing by the same rules I’ve been playing with.
But yet, I remain a journalist. Observing.
But a growing part of me wonders if that is enough.
