Editorial: Unlikely Reporter

In honor of National Newspaper Week, I’m writing my unlikely story about how I never intended to become a reporter. It’s true — it just kind of happened, albeit not entirely by surprise.

Growing up, I was no stranger to newspapers. The Herald News and Chicago Tribune were staples on our kitchen table, and my parents read them religiously. As a kid, I mostly was interested in comics until I got older, and different stories caught my eye.

Before long, I was consuming John Whiteside and Joe Hosey’s stories like water. Who was featured in the police blotter? What was happening around town? Then, I’d listen to my parents talk about it. Their influence is palpable when I really think about it.

The police scanner was always on and squelching between calls, with my parents listening. My dad leaned back in his maroon recliner, chain-smoking cigarettes with a drink, rocking in a cloud of smoke, listening to the calls or watching the news until evening fell. My mom had been a Chicago 9-1-1 dispatcher before I was born, so she was just as eager to listen as my dad was.

It was an after-work ritual of relaxing until he fell asleep in the chair, at which point my mom would tell him to go to bed. I can still hear her voice: “John, John! Go to bed,” with my dad’s sleepy reply, “I’m going.”

He would wake up early at what seemed to me to be the middle of the night to commute to downtown Chicago, photography gear in the trunk of his Mustang, riding in from the suburbs.

His entire career was dedicated to the newspaper business. He worked at the Chicago Tribune for nearly 40 years before retirement called his name. He had started as a paperboy and then trained to be a photographer, which he did for the majority of his time at the Trib.

As for me, I never knew what I wanted to do until the time was up, and I had to declare something after mulling over half a dozen career paths. I knew I was a pretty decent writer, and I figured there was something I could do with it, so writing it was.

I never really envisioned myself as a reporter. First of all, my dad got up way too early and, toward the end of his career, he was flat-out done with the paper. Add to that the speed of the internet’s proliferation in society making me question the resilience of the newspaper business coupled with the sensationalists and political puppets who were sullying the good name of journalism, and it was an easy career choice to cross off the list.

And so, I went to grad school to teach college writing. I would be a professor, make my own schedule, and teach others how to do what came easily to me but that was a challenge to others. I enjoyed sparking creativity and excitement for writing in others, showing them they could do it and even enjoy it.

I learned the importance of paying attention to what was going on at an early age. Still, I didn’t realize just how important it was until I got involved with fighting a developer encroaching on my property — threatening the dream my husband and I had just begun as newlyweds.

So I set to work, sending out FOIAs to every government entity that existed, from the local municipalities to the state and every agency in between. I scoured the information, getting the details of their plan – who, what, where, when, how, and why – investigating it from every angle.

I wrote about it online, spreading the word because it was necessary. People don’t always pay attention to what their local government is doing. They’re busy raising families and working. They’re busy living. But somebody had to tell them what was going on!

Somebody turned out to be me, along with my neighbors. I think that might’ve been when the journalism bug really bit me. Maybe? It’s hard to say. It may have been there all along, just hibernating.

I also enjoyed photography, mostly just landscapes and sunsets, moments in time – old barns and such. Photography, for me, was always just something fun I did that reminded me of my dad. I still use his brown leather camera strap.

Anyway, community activism aside, I taught for many years before things changed. Teaching lost its luster, and the joy of teaching evaded me. So, I worked at a print shop for a while. It was an ill-fated stint that I’d like to forget happened, but it brought me to where I am now. Once that was behind me, I turned my talents back to writing, mostly for businesses, writing website content, blog posts, and other boring yet lucrative things.

One evening, while trying to find another agency that would give me more butter or landscaping or financial blog posts to write about, the opportunity presented itself to pick up some reporting work. Photography and writing? The oasis in the desert felt too good to be true.

Although my background was in writing, and I took a few journalism and photography classes throughout my school tenure, I felt I’d surely find some way to bungle the opportunity.

Thankfully, I haven’t (yet). So here I am.

It’s fun to know what’s going on. It’s incredibly rewarding when my work helps, and nothing is more personally satisfying than hearing that people enjoyed or appreciated my work — or when they say it’s fair because I work so hard to keep my feelings out of it and just present the facts.

It’s a strange world out there. People should know about what’s going on, especially locally, because it could impact their lives. It can be challenging, sometimes emotionally, to cover tough stories, but I’ve been lucky so far that the worst has not been horrible. I suppose I’m still a pretty green reporter, though.

As long as the newspapers will have me, I’ll keep writing and taking pictures. Reporting the news is something I thoroughly enjoy doing. It’s a gift to have access to what’s happening and share the news. It’s necessary in the free world.

After all, somebody’s got to do it.

Stephanie Irvine is a freelance reporter.