Some Sentences, Nov. 9 – Journalism

 

Nov. 9, 2016 – This summer, after a glorious three-year hiatus as a full-time writer of fiction, I returned to my day job as a journalist. The good thing? Now I have not one, but two, jobs that I love. The down side? Obviously, carving out time for the fiction is a challenge. But last night, Election Night, I was happy I’d made the choice. No matter how you feel about the results, a newsroom on Election Night is a glorious place – no more so than on a night like last night, when my newspaper, the Missoulian, blew its deadline in the interest of getting the election’s final results on the front page, rather than a wussy “tight race” headline. I think the tension in that moment shows in the 1:30 a.m. photo above, as the newsroom crew worked at crafting exactly the right headline: Trump Beats All The Odds. They call journalism the First Draft of History. Cliched? Maybe. Except last night, the cliche was true.