Sometimes Worrying Helps

There is a problem in my community and it took a 45 minute lecture and a random Youtube video for me to figure out that the problem might be me.

Recent chain of events summarized, earlier this week I received a lecture from a visiting editor of my home city’s magazine The Pitch. After the usual “What You Should and Shouldn’t Do as a Journalist” introduction, she got to the point of her visit: a special piece the magazine had produced to highlight the increasing murders in Kansas City, Mo in 2009. It outlines an image of some kind, usually a google map and a brief summary of how the person(s) were killed. Though her focus was more on the comments from readers and how major an online blog can be for a publication, her answer to a question was actually the most important thing I “learned” that day. When asked if this had been done or could be done in larger cities she off-handly replied probably not and that luckily our city has just enough homicides to do this project.
Worse than her tactless answer was my initial mental response: I wasn’t the least bit surprised by her statement.
I’m not going to rail her for her comments, again no shock. What did surprise me was to what level I could see myself thinking the same thing. Among applications and rejection e-mails and as I make journalism less of an academic path and my actual life process, I can honestly say the line has begun to blur as to where my loyalties lie: to the story or to the victim? Sometimes I have to wonder, how much do I actually care? Am I the problem?
The only bright side: at least I’m asking myself these questions.
Shit.