There’s a whole movement inside the news business that says they need to reconnect with the communities they cover. Since I made the move from writing fiction to writing non-fiction while I was also driving a cab (in Baltimore), I had no trouble “connecting” with “my community” from day one. A cabby meets people from all walks (and rides) of life, and learns his or her city better than almost anyone — including most cops, who tend to work a single precinct or type of crime rather than getting all over the place and meeting all kinds of people.

I could go on and on about this, but I won’t. As a reporter and editor, I’ve always seen myself as my readers’ representative, not as some sort of superior being. I figure my job is to go out and learn what they’d learn on their own if they had the time. That’s it. Not great art, nothing fancy. Just inform people — and maybe entertain a little, too, along the way.

To me, not only is going out and doing a lot of jobs a prerequisite, but they should also do a lot of “walking in the shows of their audience”. I can’t tell you the amount of journalists I know with such closed minded views of the world. They can’t see past their own opinions to look at another person’s perspective, how they got into a situation, why they are there, what drives them, etc. Empathy seems lost on many reporters, as they treat their subjects as statistics tainted by their own world views.

I guess that’s why I’ve always wanted to be a reporter. I wanted to change all of that, even if it was only for my readers.