Inaugural post

I used to know what it was like to be creative. In fact, it's been 47 weeks
and 6 days since I was last creative, according to a Web site I used to frequent.

It's this whole journalism thing that's to blame, really. What happens dictates the medium, not what I want to happen or how I feel about it happening. My day-to-day life in the last year has been about chronicling that which I see and giving it to an audience. It's no longer about me, and I'm mostly OK with that.

Almost 48 weeks ago now, I apparently took a self-indulging writer behind the garage and put him out of his misery. I haven't seen him since, and, though I miss him, I know it was for the better. I still treasure the memories of his thoughtful reflections -- I hold them in my hand now and remember the time he sat beneath a tree in the park for the first time to write in a new journal. He was eager, wronged and hopeful. I ... I mean "he" ... never lost those qualities, but he stuffed them deep down somewhere to rot rather than refine.

It was the inability to generate original content that did me in. Everything I wrote was the same as something someone else had felt. Emotion is universal. It is for the same reason that I scroll to the same songs each time I open iTunes (blink 182's "Going Away to College" for those who care and will make fun of me), ignoring the extensive song list I've developed over three years. The same reason I recently purchased my seventh pair of Adidas Superstar 2Gs. The same reason I painted my car the same color it was before.

I like consistency. The news provides that, believe it or not.

At a recent meeting during my internship a top editor mentioned a great way to find story ideas is by replicating that which is printed in other newspapers. I smiled and puffed out my chest in pride as I recalled that I get most of my story ideas that way. Then I thought of the monotonous cycle implied by his suggestion. If the Washington Post does a story, then 10 large daily newspapers localize it, then 20 mid-size dailies do the same, throw in a few weeklies and community newspapers, and pretty soon the story has been done almost 100 times that week.

I came to grips quickly with the fact that the news I report tomorrow will be the same as a reporter 20 years ago, and I wonder if readers are starting to see the same thing. Sure, the Internet is killing newspapers -- every day, more and more people are getting their news from a primary source (problematic in its own right) -- but is part of the problem is that it's the same old song and dance every day for the reader?

Probably not, but it's worth thinking about. The news, for the most part, is out of our control, but I'm not so sure that we won't get our chance to fight. After all, we control how we present the news, and if we can find an innovative way to relay an age-old message, then maybe, just maybe, we'll make it.