RAGE!!!

You may think that I am a perpetually angry individual, but it is not the case. I admit to occasional bouts of apopletic rage but I find it healthy and often cathartic.
I use rage to do my job. I use it to clear my system. I use it to give a fuck.
In the job I do I get angry about anything that doesn't go my way - even if I don't care about the story. In fact, if I feel that someone is doing something they shouldn't, it often makes me give that little bit more of a shit about the tale.
I am angry when PRs refuse to tell me the basic facts. I fume when a story we had in the bag ends up in the rival. I am fit to kill when projects go tits up because someone (usually a PR) fucks up. Shit, if someone send me a stupid press release that has no relevance to my title I am known to phone them up and serve them an earful of diatribe.
I use and harness my anger so that officials, councillors, press officers and coroners clerks can't push their petty bureaucratic bullshit on me.
When the red mist comes down, I will spend hours, days or even weeks proving that a prick was wrong. I will write letters, legal challenges and fire off countless FOIs in a attempt to find out the truth.
I was once likened to a Rottweiler in my refusal to let go of a story. I spent six months on one story because I knew it to be true and officialdom continually denied it. (It made the splash).
But it is this anger that makes me, I think, a good journalist. This sense of rage can be used to defend the corner of those stories you have done a hundred times before.
Many would think the weekly battle with the council or police press office would grind you down. I love it.
I am happiest dealing with an inane complaint or a holier than thou press officer. Give me a jobsworth every day of the week. The best thing about these cancers-on-society is that if you know more about the rules than them they are wholly fucked.
Rage, however, is likely to be the cause of my early death, hence no pension provision, but I can accept that.
As long as they are more angry fuckers behind me.