What'd You Expect, Stupid Pet Tricks?   

Why it's impossible not to love the journalism biz.

LIFE HAS ITS LITTLE WAYS of reminding you you're not a kid anymore. One morning it suddenly occurs to you that a seven-day pill organizer would really simplify your routine. Or it dawns on you that every other advertisement on your favorite radio station is for some weird extract promising to revitalize your pathetic sex life. Or you realize that your last two magazine columns were unvarnished whines.
That's one of the great things about working on a college campus. You might get cranky, but you can't stay cranky for long. You're surrounded by too much youth, too much enthusiasm, too much idealism. Not to worry, we will crush it out of them soon enough, but not yet. Not today.
Because today they are reminding me of what it's like to be 20 again and exhilarated by possibilities. Standing before 80 eager writers-, editors- and "SportsCenter" anchors-to-be, I can set aside my latter-day aggravations with the industry and confidently make the case that journalism--still--is a fabulous line of work.
How shall I count the ways? Considering the audience and tipping my hat to fellow Hoosier David Letterman, I opted for the Top 10 list.
10. Journalism is fun. You get to do new stuff every day. My dad worked in a factory for 35 years. It was honest but difficult work that he endured largely so that his children wouldn't have to. I, on the other hand, once had four bylines on a single front page.
9. You can make a decent living at it. That didn't used to be the case, and it still isn't the case in every place in every job, especially when you're just coming out of school. Even so, a journalist today at a respectable news organization can without fear of ridicule shop for a new Volvo.
8. You'll be in the vanguard of the high-tech revolution. We grown-up journalists tend to find that scary, but you, more astutely, appreciate the situation as a radical widening of your options and audiences.
7. You can indulge your creative impulses to the point of exhibitionism. After all, journalism is one of the few jobs in the world in which you actually sign your work and put it out there for all to see. It takes a certain kind of personality, not to mention a certain kind of courage, to do that.
6. You meet the most interesting people. By the time I was 30 I had discussed fashion (his, not mine) with Halston, had my pedigree read to me by former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight, talked about Watergate with Judge John Sirica and visited with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter in their Plains, Georgia, home. Just months ago I was privileged to be at a dinner party with Vice President Dick Cheney. He tucked into the lamb chops with gusto but skipped the ice cream.
5. You actually get paid to snoop into other people's business. How great is that?
4. What's more, people respect you for it. They say they don't like journalists, and at least in principle many people don't. But you'll find that one-to-one, in person, most people do respect you--because your life is more interesting than theirs, because you have a talent they don't, and yes, because they rely on you.
3. The job is literally dangerous at times, and there's no getting around the fact that that is part of the charge. Even a plain-Jane reporter like me, who never went to war or covered colorful mob types, found myself in harm's way all the time.
I once covered a fire at a fuel depot miles outside town. A huge oil tank was spectacularly ablaze; it lit up the night sky for miles. But as I walked up I couldn't help noticing that the firefighters were ignoring the inferno and instead had their hoses trained on an adjacent tank that was just sitting there innocently. When I asked the fire captain why, he said that the second tank was full of naphtha and that if it got too hot it would blow a crater a half mile across. At the time we were standing perhaps 50 yards away. So I nervously asked how hot the tank was. He looked at me and said, "We don't know."
2. You are critical to our democracy. Wine, computers, theater, titanium golf clubs--these are wonderful, even noble, things, and their manufacture is to be praised. But there's a reason the manufacture of news is the one found in the Constitution.
1. You can still make a difference. If there is a creakier cliché than a Top 10 list, it is the one that goes, "Journalists can make a difference." But it's still true. As a journalist you can change a bad policy, change opinions, change lives, save lives.
That's my list. What's yours?