Every once in awhile, you are reminded of the importance of what it is we do in this business.
Usually it's from a person involved in a story that you have covered.
And yes, those are not always the most pleasant of experiences.
What is rarer - but most gratifying - is when someone tells you about the effect their interactions with you had on their lives.
This can be a crazy business. Probably now more than ever, for lots of reasons, again not all of them good.
We used to deal with a fairly neat model, delivering news in neatly packaged 24-hour chunks.
In print.
Things have changed. We now deliver news by the minute, via Twitter, Facebook and our website. At the same time we are creating the daily print product.
The minutes dizzily dissolve into hours, the hours into days, weeks and so on.
Time becomes kind of irrelevant.
Then you pick up the phone and hear a voice from the past.
The first time this happened to me about a month ago, it was a plea for help. An old friend wanted the newspaper do what it could to help find a missing friend.
The story did not end well, but it was not lost on my old friend the importance of what we do here every day.
He was glad for the chance to reconnect and extremely grateful for what the paper did.
Then a couple of weeks ago, the phone rang again.
Again it was a voice from the past.
Jawanza Keita worked for the paper a couple decades ago. He was smart enough to get out. He now is an executive with a health care firm. The company was planning a new venture and he wanted to know if we'd be interested in doing a story.
But I got the feeling he was interested in doing more than that.
He stopped by the office. What he had to say kind of stopped me in my tracks.
As I said it's pretty easy to lose track of time in this racket.
Jawanza Keita wanted to say thanks. For his experience here at the Daily Times. He says those experiences laid the foundation for his career.
I don't think I've ever had a nicer compliment.
But Jawanza tells the story better than I could.
Thanks, friend.
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