Immediately after completing my journalism studies at the Faculty of Culture and Media, I found myself in a well-known and famous newsroom with a long tradition. The editorial office that has gone through many phases and different times – and still lives in its own way, through these times of oblivion. The editorial office through which several hundred (more likely a few thousand) journalists have passed through during its entire existence. The vast majority of those journalists from the newsroom have achieved respectable and notable careers outside the newsroom, in the country and abroad. For many older journalists – veterans of journalism – that newsroom still has a kind of cult status to this day, even for younger ones who make an effort to learn more about the historiographical value of that newsroom.
There I combined the beautiful and the useful by imrpoving my skills and publishing my own stories, articles, interviews – even when those stories strayed a bit from editorial policy. Each of my texts published through that editorial office ended up in the city’s official archive, as part of the city’s cultural heritage. I was a kind of outside correspondent. I could always drop by the newsroom, which I often did. All work processes in the editorial office, at all levels, were open and accessible to me – such was the attitude of the editor-in-chief – and the people in the editorial office were pleasant and accommodating. I got to know a lot of colleagues and all the work processes in the editorial office. An important experience for every journalist.
There was always enough time for various stories and anecdotes, so a colleague from the newsroom told me a very interesting story.
It was about some girl or young woman whom I do not know and whom I never met later. She was in another newsroom for a few months, a few years before, on some kind of internship. She had her mentor, a senior journalist from the newsroom, whom I also never met because he was already nearing retirement, or in retirement, providing his services to that newsroom on a part-time basis or as a hobby. Their collaboration worked perfectly. She could always ask whatever she wanted, received advice, instructions, guidelines – all according to the rules of journalistic ethics. They also developed a kind of friendly relationship.
However, there was one thing she couldn’t ask anything about. It was about the fact that she noticed that her mentor likes to drink a glass of alcoholic drink in his spare time. It wasn’t something that bothered her in any sense. It was just a matter of healthy curiosity.
Somewhere near the end of her internship, counting on the friendly relationship they had developed through professional collaboration, she decided to politely and respectfully ask him a question. I will paraphrase their words, because I also received a paraphrased version, and the conversation between them went something like this:
She: “May I ask you one question after several months of getting to know each other and cooperating together, with the fear that you might hold a grudge against me?”
He: “Say it freely, you can ask whatever you want. I could never hold anything against you because you are here to learn.”
She: “Thank you. The question is simple: ‘Why do you journalists drink so often’?”
He, sitting at his desk, looks up at her and decides to give her a meaningful and logical rhetorical answer that would answer all her socio-philosophical questions that were swirling in her head:
“Oh, my dear child, if you would only knew about all the stuff I have to forget…”
*drops the mic*
Column written by: A.R. (for alxspirit.com)
Note: The column was written on the occasion of the World Media Freedom Day, with the aim of drawing attention to multi-layered and everyday social and journalistic issues that in most cases take place somehow quietly and intimately – “under the radar”.
Photography: Jatinder Nagra (free Unsplash license)
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