I've mentioned this before, but I consider myself the first blogger by virtue of being the last classically trained print journalists.  Faggots from Minnesota can go to Journalism School and spend $120gs to learn the difference between lead and lede.

My first job was at the The Hartford Courant which was the newspaper my brother delivered as a kid.  I walked into that building everyday in Hartford when I was 18, I trudged past the glass wall that housed the 7 acre, sixty-foot printing presses.  I walked by all the Pulitzer prizes--always briskly, always with a coffee in hand.  This is a news organization, people.

There was a sea of newsdesks, some of them still had typewriters.  You walked, faster, faster past the cameras at the Fox Affiliate Desk (those bastards, that is NOT NEWS---THIS IS NEWS!).  The printed word was revered.  In the mens room of the newsroom (there was no ladies room in there, that was in the reception area) they tacked up the day's pages behind glass at the urinals.  Like trophies in high school.

There were only two urinals in the features department and if you were pissing when your editor walked in he would come up behind you, pace about for a sec and then clap his hands like your coach, "Alright, let's go let's go!"

And I was your young intrepid reporter, pacing the filthy streets of Hartford, getting at the real story.  Finding out cool restaurants to review, searching for the heart of Weezer at their latest show.  "No comment."  Hmm, there's got to be more on this story about the new health food store in the south end.  Roll 2-12!!!

There were crates and crates of schwag in this place.  We had a charity based on the summer book sale of all the free shit we got.  But people were always sending us things.  Cameras, software, t-shirts, tickets, etc.  My mentor, Susan Campbell, used to walk up to me if she saw me eying something in the pile, "That pile there is satan."

"Huh?"

"Once you accept a gift, you've been bought.  I've been a journalist all my life and I've never let a source so much as pay for a cup of coffee."

Just then the Travel Editor was surprised by a delivery: a bouquet of flowers.  "Thank you for writing such a wonderful review of our bed and breakfast.  Please come by anytime and redeem this coupon at our new restaurant in the Berkshires opening June 5...."

"If I got those flower, Brendan, you know what I'd do?"

"Send them back?"

"No.  No need to be rude.  I would take them and give one to all the girls in the newsroom who have to take a ten minute walk just to take a whiz."

Leila, Adrienne, and I are all writing for the same magazine now.  It's lots of fun.  But it tests my standards.  First of all it, by necessity, pays crap.  The shittiest part in the end of print journalism is that at one time you laughed at freebies.

I never report on things that involve free shit.  If I review a product it's because I already bought it and tested it for months.

"You need some serious editing.  We need to talk about your stories more before we work on them."

"Not for $0.15/word I don't.  That can be your job, bitch!"

Instead of my standards going out the window, my journalism does.  I am lax with my fact checking.  I'm pretty sure that's how that sentence should work at grammatically.  

Sometimes my editor will send me out on assignment and offer me the use of the magazine's camera.  I would be totally okay doing this for my own website.  But instead I scoff at it and say out loud, "I'm a print journalist.  I don't take pictures for my own stories.  That's some blogger bullshit.  Are you going to pay me to shoot?  Should I start running on a treadmill that will kinetically power your webservers too?"

"Why are you foaming at the mouth? We can get images from their photographers."  Bleep Bleep! HONK!!  My integrity alarm went off: what is this Pravda on Prada?  We just ACCEPT whatever images the state tells us to use?  I won't stand for this!  And then I take a deep breath and realize that I'm writing a story about girls in pretty dresses, not the hooker-loving mayor of Waterbury.

In the article I wrote about shaving I started it with a quote from Ulysses, and then right before the story was to go live I wrote her a quick email, "That quote was from memory.  I looked up the real thing.  Here it is."

Because I'm terrible.  I'm also writing for Business Traveller and Interview Magazine this month and, of course, because they waste paper I let them waste my time.  I spent hours on the skype to Havana fact-checking my story via google translator.  Today I have to completely re-write my story for interview.  It's not that they pay better.  

It's just that my journalism training was in the field.  I was the first guy in the office and I turned the lights out at night.  I learned the entire style manual on my first day because I couldn't stand that condescending look of the failed freelancers who did the copy editing.  I will destroy you.  I thought as I handed in my stories with the edits tracked and all of the names spelled perfect and followed bycq to prove they'd been checked against the records at the DMV.

I always at my lunch in my car, I always had a notepad in my pocket.  I kept irregular office hours.  I was never on assignment because I came up with every story I ever wrote.

That rush, that hurry, is what I miss.  You just don't get that feeling when you're sitting in your apartment, blogging in your underwear.  Like I am right now.