Buzz Trexler

I sometimes muse about the journey that brought me into this business, as well as the love-hate relationship that continues to be this calling of journalist.

News has always been a part of my life.

I spent a good part of my early life in Richmond, Virginia, where the two local newspapers were the Times-Dispatch and News Leader. The Times-Dispatch was the morning newspaper, while the News Leader was published for afternoon readers. My grandfather subscribed to both newspapers, and also picked up an occasional copy of the New York Daily News, through which I learned to read the racing forms.

Broadcast news was also a part of my life, even from an early age, with a good many years spent in front of a cabinet version, black and white RCA television. As I lay on the living room carpet in front of that small screen, I saw man soar to the highest heights of space, and then dropped to the lowest point of humanity with assassinations, riots and war.

For local news, we watched WTVR-TV-6, “The South’s First Television Station” with its pioneer wagon-style logo. When 6:30 p.m. hit, it was time for Uncle Wally (Walter Cronkite) on “CBS Evening News.” At some point, possibly following Cronkite’s 1968 infamous editorial on Vietnam, Grandpa moved from CBS to to “NBC Nightly News” with John Chancellor and “The Huntley-Brinkley Report.”

He controlled the dial, so I moved with him.

Later, in my teenage years, I recall sitting in front of my own black and white television, hearing then-President Richard Nixon announce the ending of the draft; later, his resignation. I had a wide circle of friends, but I doubt any of them spent the summer waiting in great anticipation for the next week’s edition of U.S. News & World Report.

Guess I was a strange bird, in more ways than one during those long-haired years.

News has always been a part of my life, and somehow there is no sense of a life without news; in fact, it’s beyond me how some people believe they can fully live without being informed. My guess is they are not truly connected to the world in which they live, but only move through life in a provincial manner.

I joke with some of my colleagues that the best thing that could happen for journalism is for Congress to reinstate the draft and raise the drinking age to 26. Still, it’s not just young people who walk around with the blinders of the ill- or uninformed; in fact, there’s a 23-year-old in my family who could better than hold her own with anyone when it comes to current affairs.

That’s not a fair comparison though, because she’s a journalist.

Still, it’s said that so many fail to see the calling of journalism for what it is: A calling to public service.

Chuck Moozakis, editor in chief of the trade publication News&Tech, points out some sad facts concerning recent Pulitzer Prize winners and the tough times they are now facing:

• The Detroit Free Press is now printed only three days a week.
• The Las Vegas Sun is an eight-page publication inserted into rival.
• The (suburban Phoenix) East Valley Tribune is now a free paper, but it’s also reducing from four days to three days of publication. And Moozakis adds this: “And the reporter who helped the Trib win its coveted prize? He was laid off earlier this year.”

Moozakis then hands out a truth that professional journalists understand, but many in the general public seem to embrace.

“These newspapers all did important work, whether it was uncovering a scandal in City Hall or commenting about critical community issues. And it’s work that no other medium — television, radio or Internet, can, or has the resources to, do.”

The legions of the ill-informed, the under-informed, and uninformed will only care when their condition causes them to lose a job, a car, or even a home. Still, their condition also impacts the rest of us:

They are still allowed to vote.