I had a hard time coming up with something for this one.
But a messenger is someone who delivers a message, or news, for someone... which inevitably makes me think of a paperboy (or person, or man) delivering the news. A courier. Which in more ways than one makes me think of my maiden voyage in the news business at the Courier-Post.
Until I started working at the CP, actually even after for a little while, I didn't care much about the news. I was only part time there, but once I made friends in the news and features departments and started getting writing assignments, suddenly I cared a lot about what was printed in the newspaper. I used to wait with baited breath each Friday morning to bring in that newspaper and flip right to the middle weekend section, TGIF, to see how my latest feature about the local car show or mini golf tournament appeared between its pages. An accompanying sigh of relief each time to find my name spelled right, an acceptable headline, and that my lede had not changed in the last hours between when I last saw it and it went to the printer.
I never wanted to be a journalist when I was in college, even though I was an English major. I was interested only in creative writing for my own purposes and hopefully, one day, for the entertainment of others. But that changed when I started working for the Courier Post. An opportunity fell into my lap, and that job led to a full-time reporting position at another local newspaper. I heard once that once the reporting bug gets into your system, it's hard to get it out. That's definitely true.
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