We just do our jobs

February 15th, 2008 at 02:23pm Linda Grist Cunningham

Space shuttle. Columbine. World Trade Center Towers. War in Iraq — one and two. Virginia Tech. Today, NIU. Countless horrors small and large between each staggering headline. Almost 40 years of human catastrophe define my newspaper career. I remember where I was with each. I remember how each newsroom smelled and where the broken chairs were. I remember the journalists with whom I shared the days and nights that stretched to weeks of tackling the next piece of news and wrestling it into something that made sense. They never did, of course; there’s no sense-making of the events that drive those iconic headlines. We simply kept going, doing what we do: gathering, sorting, selecting and sharing information. The media we use has changed. It’s not about the daily newspaper today. It’s the Web, and television, and video, and photo galleries, blogs and forums. Today it’s instant; forty years ago it was tomorrow’s newspaper and maybe an “extra” edition. These are immutable: Journalists push aside their hearts, their families, their lives and we work. Around the clock to do what we do. There is nothing but this: the story. And, this refrain: No. Not Here.

Entry Filed under: NIU campus killings, Northern Illinois University