I’ve been to some of the best journalism schools in the world. My broadcast journalism career has taken a meandering path to say the least. The first journalism class where I matriculated was the cattle ranch I grew up on. From dawn til dusk (and many days before dawn until after dusk), I broke my back for the family business for 20+ years, and today I don’t regret a single minute of it.
Though I was regrettably subjected to a public school education, my summers were spent exclusively at the ranch. Work started the day after school got out in late May, and ended the day school started up afer Labor Day. The first cutting of alfalfa was already on the ground by the time I got home. Baling the hay was the first task of every summer. My father drove the tractor, which dragged the baler, which dragged me on a hot metal sled. Dust and dried bits of hay coated me from head to toe by the end of the day. Gopher holes ensured that the sled would bounce up and down, jarring my spine every few feet. Temperatures ranged into the low 100’s most days.
The baler would periodically pick up a rattlesnake in the rows of cut hay. The rattlesnakes would then pop out of the hay bales directly in front of me. They’re usually furious by that point, because they’re cut and bleeding from the tines of the baler. As they strike and try to bite the first thing in front of them (me), the best option was to simply jump off the sled and hope that I didn’t break my leg. Dad always kept a pistol loaded with birdshot on the tractor, so we could shoot a snake in the head and toss it out for the hawks circling overhead. No other experience in life could have better prepared me for covering U.S. Senate races.
Those hours spent in the hot sun with no one to talk to allowed me to refine my storytelling abilities. There was nothing else to do but to consider the nature of man and the universe, and craft my great arguments for why there could be no God who created and ruled over everything.
Cattle drives were another great journalism school I attended. Every spring and fall the cattle had to be moved from one pasture to another, either from the mountains to the valleys or vice versa. Contrary to Hollywood’s blasphemous views, cowboys are not sodomites, nor do they sit around a campfire reading “cowboy poetry” to each other. If you spend an entire day on horseback, you’re too tired and sore to sit around period. Cowboys are very simple folks. We have a healthy mistrust of any government or politician, we work hard, we take good care of our horses, and we kill our own food. They’re also very good storytellers, and cattle drives were a constant source of adventure during my formative years. Long hours in the saddle allowed me to continue telling stories in my head, and arguing with a God that I believed wasn’t there. The saddle sores and constant smell of manure prepared me for covering lengthy city council meetings.
Another journalism school I went to was the summer when I helped a professional carpenter put a roof on his mansion. “I’ll pay you a buck a bundle to carry those shingles up the ladder to the roof,” he said. The bundles weighed 90 pounds each. They had to be carried up a flight of stairs to the second floor, and then up a 20-foot high ladder to reach the roof. “A buck a bundle,” I thought. I was young and stupid and in great shape from slinging hay bales all summer. “I’m practically stealing from this fool,” I thought. $18 later, I was ready to throw myself off the roof. Pride cometh before the fall. I didn’t take any more jobs from carpenters after that. This taught me to not jump at every assignment that comes my way in a broadcast journalism job. Some things are a lot harder than they look.
The most important things I’ve learned in the course of my journalism career never happened in the classroom. The classroom stuff was all theoretical, and none of it has been particularly useful to me on the job. The best journalism schools I ever attended have been free.
This vanity project will continue…
Read Part 1 here…
Technorati Tags: atheism, best journalism schools, Broadcast Journalism Career, carpentry, cattle drive, Christianity, cowboys, rattlesnakes, Story telling, U.S. Senate race
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- My Broadcast Journalism Career
Tags: atheism, best journalism schools, Broadcast Journalism Career, carpentry, cattle drive, Christianity, cowboys, rattlesnakes, Story telling, U.S. Senate race
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