Look at the corner of this page and you will see my name. If you look at the corner of any of these stories, you will see other people’s names. These people all share a common thread; we’re journalists.
You may gloss over these names as mere words on paper, but we are real people. And we work so hard to bring you information. While we are at the very beginning of our careers, we all share the same title as Anderson Cooper or Diane Sawyer. I am a journalist, but the weird thing is, I never wanted to be.
For the last five months, I’ve been a photographer for the news stations KSEE 24 and CBS 47. What that basically means is that I run around Fresno County with a tripod and camera and capture the most amazing, disturbing and/or hellish stories of the day. I imagined I’d be a lot of things growing up — president, fireman, engineer or astronaut. However, journalist never entered my mind.
I had a love of film, and that parlayed to studying camera work and photography. I took those skills and started working at The Collegian as a multimedia journalist. A year later, and on a whim, I applied for a position at KSEE 24. I never imagined they would hire a knucklehead-college kid, but somehow I got the job. It’s been a whirlwind journey as strange as Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” but here I am.
In just the few months working in news I have seen things that have slowly broken me, made me cry and wonder what the point of it all is. I have seen three dead human beings; these stories are called “fatals.”
My first came July 26, and it was a man who slammed his motorcycle head-on into a turning big-rig. He died instantly. He didn’t stand a chance, and his body lay on the asphalt in a sea of debris and twisted metal. It’s strange to see something you know you will never forget. I put my humanity on hold and covered the story.
But after it was all over, my humanity came back, and it hit me like a hammer. I wondered if he had a family, a wife, children and friends. I wondered if they received the news yet, and it tore me inside out. It’s strange to know nothing about a person’s life other than how it ended. Seeing a person who died so pointlessly is the sort of soul-destroying experience that changes you.
Since then, I’ve covered a person who was stabbed to death and a homeless man who was robbed and beaten to death. I’ve been to a dozen fires, including the Courtney Fire in Oakhurst last Sunday that burned dozens of homes into smoldering ash. I’ve seen terrible car accidents, people horribly injured and families wailing in tears.
The strangest thing about it all is returning to your normal life, and acting as if none of it even happened. Things like getting the mail or checking Facebook become surreal experiences after bearing witness to raw, concentrated inhumanity.
I look at people around campus with quiet indignation because they haven’t seen the things I’ve seen. I’ve developed a solid “thousand-yard stare,” and I disguise it under the banner of denial. I’ve seen hell, and it’s made me a bitter person. My laughter is hollow now, and it’s wrapped in depression.
When I first started working in news, I was struck at how normal of a workplace it was. I imagined a newsroom to be something more dramatic. But it’s an office like any other — at least that’s what I initially thought. Working in news is like working in a post office in hell. It’s a normal workplace surrounded by unadulterated insanity.
When people in my major say they want to be a journalist, I wonder if they truly understand the words they’re saying. I absolutely cannot fathom why anyone would willingly choose this as his or her career. You work long hours, for little pay, to be surrounded by the worst the world has to offer. And here I stand, a journalist, something I never, ever wanted to be.
But the upside of this all is that I feel like I’ve made a difference in the world — something few people can say. I’ve covered stories that gave people important information that would otherwise be lost in our everyday rush. I’ve brought important issues to light with my camera, and maybe even touched a few people with my storytelling.
When you learn of important stories, such as the shooting of Michael Brown or the turmoil in the Middle East, I hope you appreciate the sacrifice we journalists make to get you the information you need. Because those men and women who choose to make journalism their career are a truly special breed. And they are much stronger than I.