The One Weird Thing They Don’t Tell You About Working in A Newsroom

I began my career in broadcast journalism. College told me that one day I could work behind the scenes of Good Morning America. All I had to do was grind through the ranks and pay my dues to finally make a livable wage! Through all the not-so-fun aspects of working in news, there’s one weird thing I didn’t realize would be a part of my job.Today, I work in software and completely transformed my career. In 2021, I wrote about my exit. Go read that now for background on my role.It’s not that I didn’t have fun in journalism, there were tons of cool aspects. Nothing beats the stories I got from working on that assignment desk.I was supposed to be out there beating our competition to breaking news, but I was too busy fielding phone calls from lunatic viewers.They don’t tell you about the viewers in college. Just look at the one alumnus that knew somebody, that knew somebody, that was related to Anderson Cooper who got a job as a Production assistant!The professors sell you on the dream rather than the reality. The reality is that phone call from Dale in bumblefuck watching news with an antenna.I started working in news in 2016, and I was surprised people still called the tip line. Who the hell sits around calling a local news station!?Some of the wackiest people out there.The job description didn’t say, “Field calls from wacko viewers who think you can talk to Lester Holt off-camera.”That dreaded phone ran my life. There are people in rural Pennsylvania who listen to the police scanners in their free time. They get a sick pleasure from hearing EMS crews responding to incidents about people getting shot, stabbed, or jumping from burning buildings. These at-home 911 crusaders think they are actually doing the rescuing by calling a news station. I would always get calls from these people who think I don’t listen to the scanners. I had 3 physical scanners above my head and several streaming on a computer next to me. Those…