Posted by Blair Lovern on Contests

I have written for newspapers, magazines, online sites my entire professional life (minus two years running a district office for a member of Congress.) Before getting paid for it, I wrote for school newspapers. Since the beginning I have never understood anyone in this business who says they got into it "to make a difference," yet this business is crammed with them.

Gloria Campos at Belo8 is but one example. I've never met her, but she says why she entered journalism in her most recent video blog . It was "to make a difference." She breaks down in tears over an email she received from someone she did a story on 15 years ago. Before you say I'm a cold-hearted jackass, let me say that it is a touching 3 minute and 23 second video. I think you should watch it.

My contention with Campos is not the email or her crying or the story she did. Hell, I might cry, too, if I got a note like she got. I simply think she got into journalism for totally the wrong reason. I have rarely ever heard or read any journalist say or write, "I'm in this business because I want to tell a good story" or "I want to report what happened" and so forth. Why aren't the "I want to make a difference" people in PR, or social work or some other advocacy job? I think it's demeaning to the profession to want to be in this business "to make a difference." Plus, it's such a vague declaration. Mother Teresa made a difference. So did Franjo Tudjman .

It's not my job to make a difference. If a difference is made, that's an added bonus. But my job is to tell a reader what's happening. When you tell your friends something, for example, do you do it to make a difference? No, you say something like: "Hey, man, did you hear about that jerk?"

One of my favorite reporters is Bill Gertz . "We believe in stories that make you say 'holy shit' when you read them," he once said in an interview about 10 years ago. I miss that kind of reporting. It is my desire that we can do that kind of work at Pegasus. We're just starting out, we've got a lot of stuff on our plate with a small staff and we're figuring out how to best do what we do. But dang-it, I've been a staffer and/or contributing writer at many places big and small and I've never worked for a better news outfit than here ever in my life. I see great things in our future.

That said, at Pegasus we're all encouraged to take sides and let readers know our opinions. To opine is not necessarily to advocate and to advocate is not necessarily to make a difference. One may present one's beliefs by a number of degrees. But do you think "objective", mainstream media outlets withhold their opinions or advocatism (which is not a word, but who cares) in their stories? HAHAHA! Yet they still pretend to be something they aren't, which doesn't fool anyone with half a brain.

At Pegasus we also, unlike so many in the mainstream media, trust people in the community to be able to report on what is happening just as well or better than any trained journalist. In fact, if you can do it, we want you on our team . This is our community (you, me, they), not a fiefdom only we can tell you about.

Yes, several paragraphs ago I wrote "I think it's demeaning to the profession to want to be in this business to make a difference." I also think it doesn't take a Ph.D. to be a journalist, and that if you can produce a cogent string of words or photograph or video and have some inside knowledge on a subject then you, dear sir or madam, are a potential Walter Winchell or Margaret Bourke-White. This irks "real" journalists to no end sometimes. I have seen them irked for this reason in person, shaking their head and looking off into the distance, probably wishing they had a fedora, trench coat and cigarette - if only so they could take one last puff, blow it out, shake their head (slightly) again, throw the cigarette on the ground, push their hat back on their head a few inches and say, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, what's the use" or something. (I like to pretend the world could always be an Anthony Mann film.)

Thomas Carlyle added a Fourth Estate to the great Edmund Burke's three, and I wholeheartedly believe in the importance of free speech and democracy and its responsibilities. But I seriously wonder if - no, actually, I wonder why - others in in this business still think the only means of becoming an ink-stained wretch in this great country is by divine right.

Alrighty, I have meandered off the reservation. Sorry. But watching the Campos video just got my brain churning about all the things wrong with modern news gathering. I should have just kept watching the Super Bowl postgame stuff, but I turned it off because I started to roll my eyes at everything wrong with sports journalism, which is a whole new blog post and/or book. Hey, man, I'm just calling it like I see it .