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My dream job

posted by Kate Good on 10/11/10 at 04:29 PM

I don't know how old I was when I first discovered magazines. Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek and Vanity Fair were some of my best friends when I was little. I raided the mail when I got home from school each afternoon and spent hours reading about the world, rock music, politics and movie stars.
 
My friends started bands, tried out for plays, and ran for student council. I didnt want to be a rock star, an actor, or a politician. I wanted to write about them.
 
I read and reread my favorite articles, stacking my magazines under my bed. I dreamed about interviewing Bono and Nelson Mandela and Randall Cunningham. I wanted to travel the world and watch history unfold.
 
I wrote for my high school newspaper and the other kids on staff became some of my best friends. We hung out in a dank supply closet, drank coffee, resized photos, used deadlines as an excuse to skip class, and wrote lots of bad copy. I loved every minute.
 
I started writing for my college newspaper as soon as I landed on campus. Two summers while I was in college, I worked for the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, the then-morning newspaper of my hometown Lancaster, Pa.
 
This was real reporting, and the editors drilled the rules into our heads the first night we started when they sat us interns down and walked us through the basics of writing an obituary. "If you can't do this right," the managing editor said,  "then you shouldn’t be a reporter."
 
I wrote hundreds of obituaries that summer and the next. Some people might consider this a morbid exercise, but I found it instructive. The strict structure of the obituary created to chronicle each life equally (this was before paid obits where family and friends write most of the text). I learned to ask very detailed questions and pay close attention.
 
If obits were instructive, reporting was just a lot of fun. I found I loved sitting on people’s back porches, listening as they recounted the time the flood waters lapped against the ceiling of the first floor of their houses. I'll never forget trekking out to the Pequea to watch an ark float by on the shallow waters. I happily interviewed people listening to a summer concert.
 
During my final year of college, I worked as a reporter/editor for Pacifica Radio, a small radio network, in Washington, D.C. I had amazing access, I saw history unfold, and I interviewed some of my heroes. I was having a great time, but part of me longed for the opportunity to spend more time on each story. I wanted to really get to know my subjects, explore their worlds, and understand their stories without cutting our conversation short so I could rush back to the office and file a story by that day's deadline.
 
I was also increasingly aware of the shortcomings of journalism. I saw how making a mistake or misunderstanding the facts deeply affected the subject of a story  I understood more fully that not all reporters' motives are straightforward or pure.  Most of all, I began to realize that some journalists spent so much time recording other people's lives that they forgot to live their own.
 
After a year at Pacifica, I decided to go into a Masters program in writing that would give me more time to focus on the stories I wanted to tell, both fiction and nonfiction. I made the right decision. I found I loved the discipline of spending days, even months and years, on the same topic and characters.
 
I still love magazines. When a new issue of Outside, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Time, Vanity Fair, New York, Entertainment Weekly, and People magazine (yes, People magazine) arrives I often sit on the floor of my vestibule and flip through it, excited to see what they’re covering this week. Then, I take the time to read the issue cover to cover because I find there's something elegant about how the articles fit together. I like to think about how this event or idea or question fits with the story I find on the next page. It makes me feel like a kid again.

Good_kate Kate Good lives in Lancaster City, Pa.  She is a member of Blossom Hill Mennonite Church, Lancaster. She is assistant publisher at Good Books.