Life on the 'darkside'
AFTER too many years chained to the backbench of a daily newspaper, in the
goldfish bowl of the newsroom, I experience unexpected pleasure at
the sheer variety of people, enterprise and endeavour encountered
in what I now fondly call 'real life'.
That's real life as opposed to newspaper life, where everything
is viewed through a journalistic prism - is it a story or is it not
a story? - and where complex, shaded circumstances are distilled to
an irreductible black and white, or wrong and right.
Real life is where people have multiple networks and varied
relationships; newspaper life is where all relationships with the
outside world are informed by your status as a journalist and the
dynamic that brings - distrust or sycophancy - and where you
frankly don't care about anything other than whether the
relationship will result in a story.
So the culture shift when you cross over from journalism to the
so-called dark side - oh, the irony! - is
a fundamental one. But the rewards, in terms of understanding the
world around you, are great. Suddenly, in an almost Biblical
scales-falling-from-eyes kind of way, the ex-journalist starts to
see the world in a different light.
And life not spent entirely in a newsroom, with the same
journalists, sharing the same monochrome view of the world (even
though you might love them to bits as your mates), is richer by
far.
Here's a flavour why:
Morning: Meeting at Paver Smith with a
consultant in stroke care to discuss a complex and challenging NHS
project which will save hundreds of lives in the coming year or so
(my dad was seriously handicapped by a stroke very early in life,
so this feels personal). There's something special about being
involved in a project so important to real lives.
Lunchtime: Coffee with a guy who's made his millions already
but, at the age of 55, has decided to plough most of it into a new,
cutting-edge technology venture. I'm in awe of his thirst for a
new risk and challenge when lesser mortals would be contemplating
retirement from their villa in the sun. Why is he taking the risk,
I ask. Because it's there, stupid!
Afternoon: A presentation by Gary Townsend of Everton
in the Community about the scale and penetration of their
amazing work with young people and the disabled, followed by a
brainstorm to work out how we can help. Real lives, again, and the
kind of project where you know you can make a small difference.
All these conversations take place in an atmosphere of trust and
openness (that grown-ups share such confidences with one another is
still a revelation to me after 15 years in the one-eyed world of
journalism) and every single one of them, in isolation, probably
teaches me more about people and the dynamics of their motivation
than an entire year fire-fighting in a newsroom.
The dark side? You're having a laugh.
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