News Junkie

News Junkie

From the time I was ten until the time I was 17 I wanted to be an attorney. Growing up I admired fellow Baltimorean Thurgood Marshall, who was Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Solicitor General of the United States, a federal appeals court judge, and ultimately the first African American Supreme Court Justice. Growing up in Baltimore I didn't know that my being first a black male, and my also being the son of a single mother stacked the odds against me. If my mother gave me anything it was a sense that I could do as I dreamed. I had my heart set on law school, and becoming a federal judge until my senior year in high school. By that time I realized the politics involved in becoming a federal judge. I decided to test the waters so to speak, and see what else was out there.

Growing up I loved to write. I took solace in being a good reader, and a good writer. I would write short stories and poetry almost nonstop. I would have my aunt photocopy my poems and my stories, and I would then hand them out to family and friends. I liked to think that I had my own publishing company, never mind the fact that I was giving my work away, and I never made any money. My love of writing definitely came from my mother.It's probably the second greatest gift she gave me, the first and greatest gift being her unconditional love and support. My mother encouraged my love of learning, my love of books, my love of poetry, my love of reading, and my love of writing.

I wrote then because I felt I had stories to share. In middle school and high school I wrote for my school newspapers, mostly because I enjoyed the challenge of storytelling. Many would say I am a natural journalist because I have a natural curiosity. I love to learn and be in the know about everything, well most things atleast. I also like to talk which all my friends can attest to, because our always lengthy discussions. I've always been the one many turned to for the low down on almost all topics.

In my senior year of high school my passion for journalism was taken a step further. I was given the opportunity to intern at a local television station.

I still remember my first day at the program as if it were yesterday. I'm laying in bed sulking because I felt like a reject. I had been told by my mother that I didn't make the cut. Then I get a call from my future boss at Channel 2 asking where I was? I was at home in bed, mad, is where I was. Boss lady then told me that I had made the cut, and that I was supposed to be at the station two hours earlier. I called all around Baltimore trying to get a ride to the station, which because of C.P. time made me four hours late. I'm still trying to figure out how my mother came away with "you didn't make it" when in fact I did. Anyway I made it into the station and thus began my fascination with television news. Over the course of seven months I was able to write, report, and anchor for a teen news program. The station got me hooked and it was then that I decided that I'd still earn a law degree, this time with the intention of becoming a broadcast journalist. Hmm talk about a job which revolves around politics.

Since my internship I've become a news junkie. If it doesn't come from CNN, NBC, or ABC then I don't want to hear about it. I've spent countless hours watching the news studying everything from the way the reporters write their stories, to the way anchors conduct interviews. My mother thinks I'm obsessive, but she doesn't understand how badly I want to become a respected broadcaster. It's not my goal because I'm vain or that I want to be famous, it's because I want to serve the public. I want to be one of the people whose job it is to share stories with the public. I want to help viewers understand why the world is as it is, and how the world is changing as it changes.

The people who've had the responsibility of helping us make sense of it all have primarily been white men. Day in and day out we have tuned in to see Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather. While those three men have done so much for TV news, it's about time we got a more diverse representation of America on the airwaves. Ours is a world which has inherent diversity, which displays the beauty of difference, and which also shows us that our uniqueness as a blended society is our strength and not our limitation, and is our pride and not our shame. I admire all three of those men, but I also admire others who have also paved the way for people like me to aspire to be a journalist. People like the late Mr. Max Robinson who was the first African American to co-anchor a nightly newscast, when paired with the late Frank Reynolds, and the newly departed Peter Jennings. There have been others who helped pave the way for other members of underrepresented segments of society such as Barbara Walters who was the first woman to become a respected national broadcaster, and then there was Carole Simpson, Bryant Gumble, and Robin Roberts who became recognizable African American anchors and correspondents. Now it's a lot easier for women and African-Americans to report the news. It'll be a lot easier for me in a few years than it was for them. But the job of reporting the news isn't all glitz and glamour. The job of reporting is about hard work, digging deep, and committing yourself to doing it right. Peter Jennings did just that he worked hard, he dug deep, and committed himself to getting the stories right.

Well, Peter Jennings died last night of cancer. Peter Jennings' death marks the end of an era, because none of the anchors I've watched all my life are now the faces to which we turn to each night. Tom Brokaw retired so that he could go out on top, Peter Jennings has now died, and Dan Rather was forced from his anchor seat over a botched report about the President's military service. Without "the big three news anchors" it'll be a lot different when we go home every night and watch the evening news.

Maybe one day I'll be among the brave group of men and women who get to tell our stories. Maybe I'll get to report about overcoming obstacles, and achieving unimaginable success. Maybe I'll be part of the mirror through which viewers the world over can see themselves.
Maybe I'll be able to help chronicle this nation's and the world's magnificent past, present, and future. Maybe I myself will one day become and live up to the title of anchor. Our traditional well-respected and well-liked anchorpeople have after all been our rocks in times of uncertainty, they've held us steady in times of despair, and taught us more about the world each and every time we saw them.

R.I.P. Peter Jennings you lived one hell of a life....each night you gave us a better look at the world in which we live.

and

R.I.P. Akilah Amapindi..........a 23 year old journalist who died last weekend in Atlanta....it is believed she contracted malaria while in Namibia. Akilah was spending time with her father and also working as a journalist for the Namibian Broadcasting Company.

Though I knew neither Mr. Jennings or Ms. Amapindi, the journalism community is a family, and their losses are truly felt.