Day 5 - "Proud Mary Keep On Burnin'"

It's been a couple of days since I last posted, but I've been busy. Two articles published, finishing up my last week of work before vacation, and my boyfriend coming home after 15 months in New Mexico sure have kept me on my toes.

In between everything that's been going on, I got a tweet from Romenesko, a journalism news service about the industry, about a Wall Street Journal article about the viability of the newspaper industry. In the past couple of weeks, stocks in newspaper publishers have significantly increased, but author Martin Peers argues that the cuts newspapers have had to undergo may not lead to long-term sustainability.

It's a scary thought that someday, because the price of newsprint is through the roof and advertising revenue is at the same level it was when my parents were transitioning from elementary school to junior high, I might not walk across the street and get the newspaper out of the box every morning. The newspaper is something that has always been a fixture in my house; there hasn't been a day in my life where the news hasn't intentionally not been in the green or orange plastic box on the other side of the road. It's as much of an essential as my mom's chocolate chip cookies with chopped walnuts in them.

Ever since I found out I could write, I kept telling myself that I was eventually going to write for a big newspaper in a big city and have people notice my name every time I signed for something. I was going to be the next celebrity journalist, and I set out to do that from the time I walked into my middle school for the first day of fifth grade and joined the newspaper staff. I went from reporter to news editor to editor-in-chief, then joined the high school paper and went through the same cycle. I thought I was getting where I needed to go, then went off to college to another newspaper staff and had a ball writing for a great paper with some of the greatest journalists I've met in my short life.

Let's hope, for old time's sake, that Peers's prediction is wrong. In my mind, it's 2065, I'm 78 years old, and I'm still pushing my walker down the driveway to pick up a newspaper every morning. Maybe I'll find an article of mine, and that adrenaline rush I get every time I see my words in print and touching the actualization of my words, thoughts, and work between my fingers and seeing the ink rub off on my fingers is still there. That's my wish.

-AA