(Sunday Paper, Year VI, Issue 5)

For those of you who don’t know much about my past, allow me to take you back a few years.

Seven years ago I ended about a decade of my working life where I was a teacher.

Before that, I was in TV news.

I spent a total of about five years in a variety of roles in three newsrooms.

And that’s the background information you need for today’s post.

OK - a little more background information: I started out, right after college, as a production assistant in the newsroom. This followed an internship in the sports department.

As a production assistant I ran the teleprompter, got scripts printed and sent to the anchors, and hung around chit-chatting with folks around the newsroom. Tons of fun. (The chit-chat. Made great friends.)

From there I went on to become a news writer and then I did a good bunch of sports producing before writing news again at a different station.

All of this is to say: I worked in news, but I was never a huge fan of news.

I’ve known people who are passionate about the news…but that’s just not me. I was passionate about sports…but not Boston sports in the way I had to be to continue down that path here. (And ended up not really willing to make any moves that would have led to an on-air path…so I ended up leaving the business. But that’s also beside the point. A little.)

I tell you all of this because lately…I’ve been really into the news in a way that I haven’t been in years, if ever.

I am certainly the most well-informed I’ve ever been, which I think I’ve mentioned here before.

But it goes beyond the daily paper, which as you can see above I enjoy reading every morning over breakfast. (Yes, we still get a print newspaper. That’s another story for another day…although I think I’ve written about it before.)

I have actually sought out and watched the news on more than one occasion recently, which is more than I have in a very long time. (National news, not local. Mostly based on the times I’m watching, I guess…though also because I guess I prefer the national to the local.)

So what does it all mean?

I’m not sure yet.

I’m certainly not going out looking for a news writing job right now…but I think I would be very good at explaining the news to someone if I had to.

I think I’m just feeling appreciative of the people - both those I know and those I don’t know - who are involved in journalism and reporting the facts and doing their best to keep the public informed.

Because I think I’m a better person when I’m an informed member of the public…and I can’t be the only person who feels that way.

Notes

*Ha. I just realized if you say it the right way the title of this post - “news itch” - can rhyme with Sucich. Unintentional.

*What a lazy weekend. No sports that I care about (a sign of things to come until baseball gets underway - after the Super Bowl next week, of course), and no obligations for us as a family. So we broke out a big puzzle and just lazed around all weekend. It’s been nice.

*Except for the fact that puzzles aren’t really relaxing for me. I don’t like leaving them undone.

*Looks like we’re getting a storm this week, too. That would have added to the lazy weekend - no reason to even go out.

*If you followed me on Twitter you would have known about the puzzle. You can do that here. If you Liked the Facebook page you would have also seen one of my tweets this week on Wednesday. If you don’t do that already you can do that here. And I promise the Wednesday posts will get better than they were this week. I think I have a good idea for this week.

*I haven’t written about ‘What I’ve Been Enjoying’ much recently, but I guess I’ll spend a word or two here on the Marvel Universe: a few months ago I started catching up on Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. What a good show. I am of two minds about it - one is that I’m sorry I didn’t watch it when the movies were coming out because its world aligns with that world and it would have been cool to watch everything at the same time. On the other hand, there are a lot of cliffhangers that I don’t have to wait either a week or months to be resolved, so maybe this is better.

*We’re also watching ‘WandaVision’ which is, other than ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’, the first show we’re able to watch in real-time since catching up on everything. So that’s been enjoyable…and if you gave up on the show after the first couple of episodes because they were weird….the payoff has come and it’s great. (In my humble opinion.)

*Lastly, I think I just want to put this in writing: I am happy the Mets were sold. I’m glad they have an owner who is willing to spend to win. But I do not particularly like the new owner and I guess championships will heal all wounds but I kind of don’t have a great feeling about his tenure. This week brought his controversial standing to the forefront because he’s a hedge fund guy and they were on the wrong side of the news (I guess depending on your perspective)…but the GM hire/fire before that was not great…and the day before the Mets made the big Francisco Lindor trade the new owner got his first negative press alleging mistreatment of a woman in the workplace. I feel like the trade was a big cover-up move. I see that happening often down the road. I’d love to be proven wrong. I’m sure most teams’ owners aren’t saints. We’ll see how it unfolds.