Days 242 and 243

Writing exercise – Fired from your favourite job and chose a different career

…

The thing about being an investigative journalist, it was at times a very dangerous job.

Because when that word ‘investigative’ is properly interpreted by the recipient of the title, you will find yourself at one time or another dealing with very nasty and sometimes life-threatening situations.

Investigations are rarely run from the comfort of a desk. It was a coal face job; it required the nurturing of contacts over time, and it required knowledge of the law, the courts, in fact, practically the whole justice system.

I wanted to be a lawyer until I realised I would have to defend scumbags. Do that, or property law, divorces, wills and inheritance, or perhaps something equally less interesting. So I chose the next best profession, journalism.

It took a few years to get to the right desk.

Then, having finally made it to the top, so to speak, there was a management restructure. Not entirely unexpected because paper media was a dying breed, and everything was going digital. It meant I had to make a few subtle changes, like deadlines, which were now same-day news, no overnight, eschewing the piece before publication the next day.

With the management upheaval came a new editor. That new editor brought his son, a so-called wunderkind, and as I learned very quickly, the person who wanted my job. I discovered this very interesting piece of information when I was called into the editor’s office and told my piece was not good enough, and they were running the ‘wunderkinds’ piece.

I read it. Flasking, full of supposition and inaccuracies, but fitted the criteria for the ‘new’ punchier news we were writing for the ‘new’ audience, the under-25s who liked their news in short, sharp sentences with no interest in whether it was true or not.

The days of true journalism were gone. We might as well send it out in test message speak.

I told the editor it hadn’t been fact-checked, it had seventeen inaccuracies or downright wrong statements, and overall, it was rubbish.

In response, he gave my desk to the wunderkind.

My response, perhaps a little hasty but definitely made in anger. I quit.

…

Of course, like any decision made in anger, when you wake up the next morning and realise what you have done, there is that moment of regret. That disappeared when the face of the wunderkind reappeared, staring into the editor’s office, a supercilious ‘I’ve won’ look on it, and even more elated when he saw me pack my stuff into the box.

It just made me mad all over again.

My phone vibrated, left on vibrate, so I wasn’t woken up overnight. I knew when the news leaked out that I had left, a few people would ring and ask why.

Or not. The media these days is a fickle business.

I saw the name flash up on the screen, Jane, and I would have to ring her back. She and I went through University together, fierce rivals for the campus paper job, and in writing the best articles. She was always one step ahead of me, but that was because she was better.

I like to think I’d caught up in recent months, but now I was not so sure what was going to happen.

“I’m told you quit.” No hello, no how are you? It was probably in the middle of an interview while the interviewee was taking a break from one of her relentless interrogations.

“Painted myself into a corner.” It was more or less the truth.

“More likely, Jacques screwed you over.”

Wunderkind had a name. And, no, he was not part French. It was a pretentious interpretation of his usual boring name of Jack.

“He apparently writes what children want to read. We’re diversifying from paper to instant release on the media website. Paywall subscriptions and verified hits are all the rage. My stories are too ‘heavy’ and long-winded. Murton would be turning in his grave.

Murton was the previous editor, a proper editor, feared but fair, who took me on as one of them know-it-all university types, to what a good journalist was supposed to be. The Democrats’ losing the last election killed him, literally. The night Kamala Harris conceded, he had a fatal heart attack.

“That isn’t news, that’s just waffle.”

“Not my problem any more.”

She let that sink in, and then asked, “What are you going to do. I hear there are a few posts up for grabs, especially with someone with your connections and experience.”

I had thought that too. There were at least three rival media outlets that would take me on in a heartbeat, but the thing is, what happened at my own place would inevitably happen everywhere else, because the truth of the matter was that paper was a dinosaur.

The news was going to change to that immediate, cryptic, full of lies and supposition and be damned to the consequences stuff that came from the actual source. Reporting it didn’t make it true; it just furthered the agenda of those putting it out there. Besides that, any good journalist now works for the mainstream media, and they just peddle ‘fake news’.

What was the point when half the voting population would rather believe the lies and not bother to sort the fact from fiction?

“I’m done. Time to go up the mountain to that log cabin, far removed from civilisation and let the world explode. There’s a war coming, and I don’t want to be a part of it.”

I heard her sigh. We had vowed to publish the truth and be damned if it came to that. Unfortunately, if my sources were correct, we would not be publishing the truth for much longer.

“What are you going to do. I know you would go crazy in that log cabin.”

She was right. Not very large, but big on self-sufficiency. It was also a doomsday prepper’s paradise. My father had been paranoid, as had his father before him, and ever since the 1950s, our family had a nuclear fallout shelter and supplies for a thousand years, or so it felt.

“For a while, maybe. Then I considered applying for a PI licence. There isn’t much different research for stories, as it involves taking on other people’s problems.

“Then let me guess who your first target is?”

I didn’t answer, and it elicited a second sigh. “Just get another job, I’ll send you the list of vacancies.”

“Send it. Then we’ll have dinner, on me,” I said. “Perhaps we could join forces. I have an idea you might like.”

“Tonight?”

“When you’re ready, give me a call.”

It was done. Now all I had to do was sort out the details.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025