I’d love to figure out an algorithm that could tell me the percentage of depressing news stories I sub, but I’m willing to wager a guess that a little over half probably are. Over time these awful drips of news have been welling up and plopping down on my desk, one by one. Yet like with everything, at some point in time, something has got to give.
And today, I think I achieved the ultimate low in work, when I picked up a story about a 36-year-old man who broke into an ill, elderly woman’s property – and subjected her to a rape ordeal that lasted a brutal seven hours.
This woman is 86.
As a news consumer, I have the distinct pleasure of being able to ‘look away at the nasty bits’. When I settle down to read a paper; I pick and choose the stories I pore over. Things like this blow me away. As simple and perhaps unassuming as it is, the aforementioned was one of the most exciting stories I read in a long time. It made the word ‘news’ seem real to me again. Sometimes I will devour the bad stuff – the more morbid elements to a day’s news admittedly pique interest from time to time – but ultimately, there is a choice there.
Newspaper staff aren’t afforded that luxury. It doesn’t matter how grim the story is, it must be written/read/subbed, depending on your job. And it ain’t a pleasant business when your fellow citizens are out there ramming into each other on the country’s roads, stabbing Polish visitors with screwdrivers and, in this case, committing the most unthinkable acts against the elderly.
Yet as much as it pains me to read the minutae of such horrifying acts, it’s my job to be as thorough as possible with every story I pick up. Which means reading every word. And right now as the printing presses churn out a few hundred thousand copies of the paper, this woman’s trauma will soon be shared with whoever chooses to read. Tomorrow, she is the news – and that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth tonight.
Unfortunately and often unfairly, bad news is the money maker. If it weren’t, I’d be out of a job.
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