Taking the Joy with the Sorrow

I was having a great week. I knocked off a couple of stories that I was just chomping at the bit to do. One, a profile of a Vietnam veteran in honor of Veterans Day, turned out pretty cool. My subject was a good guy, conflicted about both Vietnam and Iraq, sincere and open. An American hero in and out of uniform.

I didn't learn until late in the interview that he had likely read to most of my kids at one point or another as they passed through elementary school, and may have spoken to at least one of my daughters middle school class on the meaning of Veterans Day and his experiences in the war. When I got home and asked the girls if they knew him, they all said "We know that guy."

I hope I did him justice.

The other was an in-depth look at an experiment at the local elementary school. Two fourth grade teachers are experimenting with single gender classrooms and it is amazing the advantages it brings. Recent research on the genetic differences between boys and girls is also fascinating and probably puts to bed once and for all the feminist myth that boys and girls are exactly the same.

I consider it the cutting edge of a trend that will ultimately become standard in education, but I've been wrong before.

While those stories were in the can by Friday, when I got to work on Monday, another story was waiting to be written. A 20-year-old man hit and killed on a county road over the weekend. The hardest part was having to call the kid's mom. Having to do it every so often does not make it easier, trust me. Having the story done and ready for print Tuesday evening was of great relief.

That relief was short-lived though, as this story awaited me this morning (here is the follow up, which has more details). The fact that it happened in the high school and directly following a wrestling practice, and to someone so young, made it the story of the day, not just locally but in the Tein Cities as well, where the TV people are in the middle of sweeps week. Every Twin Cities news broadcast had a transmission truck in town today. They were still there when I came home.

We fielded calls from the Minneapolis paper and the TV people all day long. Reporters looking to trade on information, digging for the local angle and contacts. It seemed like half the city called as well. Over the course of the day I interviewed the EMS people, and various school officials, including an intense and emotional half-hour sit-down with the superintendent. A good man in a storm.

I guess I should take pride in the fact that we had by far the most substantive information on the tragic situation, and I am proud and relieved that my editor was not at all interested in voyeuristic images of children grieving. We definately got the story though. We led the news cycle for virtually all of the business day. All of the TV people are playing catch up tonight and will be reporting the details we broke over the course of the day.

I would have prefered it didn't happen at all though, and that I could have spent my day, and my week, busy with happier subjects. But, like every news cycle, you take the joy with the sorrow.

Sometimes the sorrow sucks though.