Life in the newsroom

Started with the push of a button.\nA little red button.\nFlicked on the television the other night, and was startled to recognize myself.\nLike a 42 point headline, I was splashed across the screen, staring back at myself.\nI caught NBC's "Deadline," which stars Oliver Platt as the gritty, rabble-rousing star columnist of the New York Ledger, a tabloid presumably modeled after The New York Times.\nAn indie film mainstay, Platt is known for his breakthrough roles in such landmark works as "Tall Tale: The Unbelievable Adventures of Pecos Bill" and "Funny Bones."\nA Pulitzer Prize winner, Platt's character, Benton, pens the column "Nothing but the Truth." Day after day, the hard-boiled, ink-stained, womanizing sot champions the little guy, going whole hog with the crusading for justice thing.\nWith the help of some of his journalism students at the college at which he finds time to teach, Benton frees a wrongly convicted man from death row. A man whose head he had called for during the trial.\nTireless in his pursuit of the truth, Benton also discovers a candidate for city council is a convicted fugitive living under an assumed name. He stirs up the ire of the Russian mafia, prompting death threats.\nAll this is supposed to be dramatized or romanticized, but I can tell you that it's just a day in the life of a journalist like me.\nI sit here, typing up this column, eating Chinese food from the carton, chain-smoking unfiltered Pall Malls. A bitter cup of coffee in a dinky little Styrofoam cup rests just next to my keyboard, a half-finished flask of whiskey in the pocket of my ugly tweed sports jacket. I'm wearing a fedora with a press card stuck in the bill. My colleagues, not burdened by deadlines, exchange witty banter.\nPeriodically, my editor-in-chief -- a gruff, balding fellow with rolled-up shirt sleeves and a green visor -- calls me into his office to chew me out.\n"Damn it, you're pushing the line," he'll say. "You've got to back down."\nBut no, I disregard all that, in noble pursuit of the truth, tearing down corrupt public figures and other sacred cows so comfortable in their complacency. Sources never stonewall me, and the police are always friendly and helpful. Hell, I don't even need to take notes.\nLibel laws never bother me. So maybe that Congressman didn't really cannibalize those innocent schoolchildren. I shouldn't be expected to know he was addressing the House floor. No skin off my back.\nAnd I'm resolute in the certainty that the fruit of my investigative efforts should be opinion pieces, instead of solid, factual reporting. Columnists break all the important news. Were it not for the diligence of some obscure Hollywood hack, the public would still be in the dark about the whole Brad Pitt/Jennifer Aniston fling.\nYes, I am a proud member of the Fourth Estate, the only defense between the people and the forces of tyranny. Were politicians not kept in check by the watchful, scandal-hungry eyes of the media, they might actually get laid every so often.\nWhenever I'm trying to prove the innocence of some poor schmuck on death row in spite of a slew of conclusive DNA tests and the testimonies of eye-witnesses, I can always turn to my trusty students. They don't have to obsessively worry about getting clips in the mad hunt for internships.\nIt's really just cake. After my first byline in the school paper, The Wall Street Journal started knocking down my door.\nAnd doubling between a daily stint at the newspaper and teaching a few courses has never presented a problem. That's why journalism faculty are so frequently active reporters.\nAt the end of the day, I hit the pub to work off the stress. The bartender always provides some insightful new angle to a story that I never would have otherwise considered. And showing up to work severely hung-over is almost mandatory.\nEvery night, a strikingly beautiful and similarly laureled colleague of mine and I rut like weasels in heat.\n"Oh Joseph," she'll whisper in my ear.\nBut then, police sirens!\nImmediately, I'll throw on a shirt and tie, running off into the dark streets, reporter's notebook in hand. \nInto the mean city streets, the streets where so many hopes have been shattered, so many dreams deferred, so much life teems as people hustle about, thinking only of clocking in....\nYada, yada, yada.\nJust send me my Pulitzer.