The News and Me

For the past 10 years, my family has visited Pt. Reyes, a section of the California coast just north of San Francisco. This trip is filled with tradition – we stay at the same house, visit the same beaches, and do the same hikes, year after year. But my favorite tradition is a smaller one: reading the police blotter of the local newspaper.

I was, in part, raised by the news. My family read the news, The New York Times arriving in our driveway every day, occasionally accompanied by the New Yorker, Dwell, or Sunset Magazine. As a kid, I would read the headlines, and flip through the comics on weekends, filling the infinite free time kids seem to have. "I'm bored" was usually not an option.

But even more than the print news, I was an NPR kid. I know the names; "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross would usually be airing as I was picked up from school, followed by the news with Audrey Garces, Guy Marzorati, or even Audie Cornish.

I also knew the shows. When I wasn't paging through the New Yorker, I was usually listening to KQED (our NPR station) or KDFC (our classical music station). The NPR Saturday lineup was especially exciting. "Car Talk" at ten, "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" at eleven, "This American Life" at noon, "Radiolab" at two, and "Freakonomics" at three. Lunch was at one. On the weekend, I usually fell asleep listening to "The Moth" or "TED." On weekdays, it was "Forum" with Michael Krasny.

All that is to say, the news was part of my life. As a kid, hearing the 5-minute long NPR briefs at the beginning of each hour, I began to form a picture of the world. I still remember hearing about fighting in the Middle East as I fell asleep, the sounds of missiles ringing from the "Buzz Aldrin" -edition radio next to my bed, gifted to me by my grandfather. It felt real. I thought about the kids in those countries, what it must be like to fall asleep not knowing if you would wake up in the morning. I was probably ten years old. It didn't scar me, but it stuck with me.

As I grew older, my news consumption shifted towards the digital. I got an email account, read the Times on the library computers of my middle school during lunch. Encouraged by my grandmother (a photographer and former style editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) I became obsessed with photojournalism. I carried my camera with me everywhere, each day an opportunity to add another photo to my collection. Photography and journalism changed the way I saw the world, made me stop to look at things I would've previously ignored.

I still consume the news, still read the paper – the physical paper, delivered to my dorm every day. Maybe it's tradition. I still like reading the local paper in Pt. Reyes; the "Sheriff's Calls" are just as amusing as they were at age 9. Each entry – one sentence per call – is so rich with detail, an entire universe packed between the capital and the period. For example:

NICASIO: At 6:09 p.m. someone claiming to be a minister of the lord called about hybrid demon babies, wicked out-of-state people involved in witchcraft, and the local post office.

Those 28 words are a roller-coaster replete with characters and circumstances. The caller claims to be a minister of the lord (it's unclear which one) concerned with hybrid demon babies. How would that work? Is the father the Devil? Is the mother a virgin like Mary, or was there an encounter? How did the babies become demonized? From my experience, small children often exhibit devilish qualities that can be explained by their inaptitude at ethics and table manners.

Or maybe it was the witches who caused the babies to be possessed. Out-of-state seems to imply the caller is sure these witches are U.S. citizens, which is good news: should they be tried for witchcraft, they are entitled to due process and habeas corpus, at least in theory. It's unclear if their wickedness is a crime in itself. California, at least, has no statute outlawing such actions. This is not legal advice.

Finally, a mention of the local post office throws a wrench into the garbage disposal that is this story. Is the local post office harboring the witches? Or perhaps the demon babies were sent to the caller via USPS Priority Mail. Or maybe they lost a package, adding to the apparently awful day the caller seemed to have having.

Good journalism alerts us to the vastness of reality. I think the police blotter does the same. Compiling these entries is an art form, just like music or photography. Reading them is sacred. It's like I'm in my bed again, listening to my radio as I drift off to sleep, the story transporting me, for just a minute, into another world.