After care service

I had a very interesting conversation with a household name who works for one of the nationals.
I will call it the 'dead-kid' concept. As a journalist we get to wade through life's grittier events. Not a week goes by without at least one (and in some cases more than a dozen) references to suicide, violence, rape, child abuse or just good old fashioned murder.
A crime reporter is forced to swallow this grief pill on a daily basis. So my point is this, how can a reporter get emotionally involved with every story they write. I say you can't, you would go insane. So if a kid dies, no matter how horrible the circumstances, can you really afford to give a shit?
Sure we empathise and symapthise with the family - in order to get collects and a chat mainly. But do we carry every dead kid with us? I don't. It's just another tale to me. Do it, write it up and move on. It has to be this way.
But my new friend became quite agitated as to my seemingly callous attitude. She had covered the Dunblane massacre many years ago. Seventeen dead - 16 of those children - and it had, and still does have, a profound effect on her.
This I can understand and so my 'dead-kid' concept fell a little flat in the face of such a momentuous fucked-up situation.
But she made an excellent point. All of the fire, police, medical services responding to events like this and others receive counselling to come to terms with what they have seen and done.
But what do our touchy-feely newspaper companies offer in terms of grief therapy.
That's right, absolutely nothing.
Just get on with it.
And lo, the 'dead-kid' concept is revived.

Standards slipping?

It's hard to know what's really happening in the newsroom in terms of the quality of journalism and the trainees we are getting. So many journalists (I prefer reporters) of a certain age hark back to a golden age. An age of flawless reporting by three-week-in juniors, trainees bringing down the heads of councils, zero grammatical errors from a band of hardened 16-year-old news gatherers.
Obviously this is all a bag of absolute cock.
There has always been bad journalists, useless, lazy, greedy, spiteful, retarded journalists. This industry is and, I suspect, always will be populated by crap, stupid, idiotic reporters.
But will, oh ye of little faith, also be the home of earnest, honest, brave, determined, motivated, clever, sexy?, funny, smart and talented young hacks.
But the basics are missing.
I always ask (tell) my lot to have an awareness of the things that go on around them. The big stories nationally. The big issues locally. Who's shagging who in the office? It's all important. Information is power. No matter how small the snippet.
But most of the new guys have no idea what is in their own paper. They look at what they have written and how it looks and that's that. I see their eyes glaze over as soon as their own, often pitiful, news list are dragged out as conference. In an industry dominated by petty rivalry, jealousy and terrible, terrible bitterness, if juniors have little or no interest in what their own collegaues are doing, how, in the name of holy fuck, are they expected to know what is happening in the real world?
These young turks of journalism, these purveyors of truth, these bastions of all that is good in this dark, dark industry haven't even got the basic interest in what they actually do.
If they don't buy and read their own products why should anyone else?