Alexandra Bogdanovic's Blog: That's life... - Posts Tagged "print-journalism"

As a lot of you know, there aren't too many things I miss about being a reporter.
I don't miss the 18-hour days. I don't miss the tight deadlines. I don't miss the stress and aggravation. I don't miss self-important public officials or arrogant cops.
I don't miss standing around crime scenes for hours or rushing to cover a plane crash at three in the morning.
I don't miss working for what amounted to less than minimum wage and I certainly don't miss office politics.
To be perfectly frank I'm much better off without most of the people I worked with (although I do miss a few).
I must admit there are some other things that I do miss though. I miss the communities that I covered. I miss the readers whose lives I touched. I miss the fun assignments that editors dismissed as unimportant, like this one I did in The Plains, Va., back in 2011.
No reporter will ever win a Pulitzer for covering a village scarecrow contest... unless the judges were on the take or someone stuffed a dead body into one of the costumes... Call me cynical, but stranger things have happened.
But at the end of the day, these were the stories that people loved the most. These were the "feel good stories," the stories that touched their hearts and made them laugh. These were the stories that took their minds off all the troubles in the world -- at least for a little while. These were the stories that helped them take a little bit of pride in their communities. I know all of this it's because the readers told me.
So I'll let other reporters tell the world about Isis and Ebola and the economy.
I'll let them have the satisfaction of spreading the word about the upcoming elections and I'll let them have the glory they all think that they deserve.
I've been there, done that and gotten the awards to show for it.
I take pride in those awards. But at the end of the day, I made people smile. I made them laugh. Perhaps I even made them feel a bit better about the world.
I'll always take pride in that.
Until next time, "That's life..."