When new reached our newsroom that a couple of television reporters were gunned down in Virginia, somebody made a joke. Reporters pride themselves on what we inevitably call “gallows humor.” Somebody HAD to make a joke, to live up to our self-anointed reputation for toughness. It was not a funny joke. Most jokes you have to reach for are not funny.
Reporters don’t engage in this kind of humor because we are journalists, not at all. We joke about these things for the same reason anyone would. Because the thing didn’t happen to us. A reporter won’t joke when his wife gets breast cancer. A reporter won’t joke when her son is killed in a motorcycle accident. I’ve seen small-town sports writers moved, not to a joke, but to tears when the local football team loses the state championship.
I think what moved me about the deaths was what the two were covering at the time. They were at the mall, doing a tourism story, talking to someone connected with the local chamber of commerce.
I’ve been a newspaper reporter for 32 years. I’ve covered that story. It’s a dog, a woof-woof, a piece of little to no interest to either me or the photographer with whom I am working. We know how to do it, and we do it well, because we’ve done it hundreds of times.
I work in Massachusetts. When the Patriots win a championship, I get sent out with a photographer to write about sales of Patriots gear at the local mall. The photographer and I talk to a couple of store employees. Then we wander around the store, waiting until we see someone buying a Patriots T-shirt. I get a quote. The photographer gets a picture. We do this three, maybe four times and then we go back to the office.
The average reporter, though he/she likes to pretend to have a certain toughness, will cover many more of these stories than murders. You go to the mall. You go to the press conference. You follow the candidate as she tours a local industry and explains her program for economic development. You go to church events and open house at the new high school.
You cover house fires, but the firefighters make sure you stay at a safe distance. You cover murders in bad neighborhoods, but you don’t have to be afraid, because there’s been a murder, so the street is infested with cops.
It’s a good job, as honest as transmission repair, and it’s what I know how to do. Most of the time, it’s not breaking the big story and it’s not investigative reporting. Most of the time, it’s a Water Commission meeting or a carnival at the Presbyterian Church. In the language of print journalism it’s “the stuff on page three.”
We’re all proud of those reporters who die covering a war, as we should be. It’s a damned noble thing. But, if you’re a real, working reporter, you’re also proud of the people who died covering the stuff on page three.
Marc Munroe Dion is a nationally syndicated columnist. Dion’s book “Marc Dion: Volume I” is a collection of his best 2014 columns and is available for Nook and Kindle.