Journalists aren't in it for the money, because there's none, and less every day. And they're not in it for the respect, because the public who gobble up their product - usually for free - have made sure of that.Some of them are in it for the glory: a byline is their main goal. And some of them are in it for the smugness: knowing they haven't sold out their talents to the dark side of comms or PR jobs. And some of them are just in it for the breaking news.
It can be an absolute rush, dealing with a sudden, breaking story. Getting as much information as possible, confirming it, and sharing it with the world can be a shot of adrenaline, and then constantly dealing with updates, and often a huge flow of copy that follows the unexpected event.
There can be arguments about the definition of breaking news - and the over-use and diluting power of a breaking news banner is a topic for another time - but we all know big, breaking news when we see it.
The New Zealand media has become a lot better at dealing with breaking news events over the past few years, with huge news events like the catastrophic Christchurch quakes, and the horrific deaths at Pike River. Everyone knows the routine for earthquakes in particular: there isn't a journo in the country who isn't intimately familiar with Geonet and the USGS quake trackers, and there is almost an instant formula for a breaking quake story, of location, depth and strength, followed by ongoing reports of damage or clearance.
Earthquakes strike right out of fucking nowhere, hitting at any time of day or night, often at editorially inconvenient moments. But when a big one does go down, it's all hands on fucking deck, whether it's one o'clock on a Monday morning, or four in the afternoon, when half the newsroom is about to clock off.
Big breaking news always comes out of nowhere, with a mixture of shock value and the need to know more. You can't manufacture this kind of news, but you always know it when it happens.
This week, of course, the big unexpected news was the announcement that prime minister and renowned dork John Key was stepping down. Nobody saw this coming (although several have claimed they called it beforehand), it dropped during a sudden press conference, during a period where the government is in reasonable shape.
For the record, the mighty Andrea Vance at TVNZ definitely broke the news about Key's resignation before anybody else. For a good 90 seconds, she was the only person saying that he was going. She got it right on the nail, before anybody else, and after a minute and a half of newsrooms around the country filling with the cries of 'WTF?', everybody else in the world piled onto the news.
It was a familiar pattern from there – stringing together a quick story that quickly filled with reactions and tributes. All the opposition politicians put down their hatchets for a minute to say nice things about Key (with the always notable exception of Winston Peters, who is too old and grumpy to waste time on platitudes he doesn't mean), there were plenty of 'This Is Your Life' pieces, and then a million hot takes on what it all means for the country. Some journos were just happy that wouldn't be stuck transcribing Key's usual garbled quotes - the man never used four words when 16 would do - but life went on.
The next step, if warranted, is the investigative process – why it really happened - which can take years. There were awful rumours about the 'real' reasons for Key's departure less than half an hour after his announcement, but it might take years or decades to actually discover the real truth.
At least, for now, the Key resignation is one of those slightly rare big breaking news stories that doesn't involve some kind of misery, death or tragedy. Journos with enough self-awareness always feel awful when they get excited about something that is causing hardship and pain to other people, but the Key news was a reasonably happy piece of coverage.
It might never really last, but breaking news never does, and there is always something new to report, every day, every hour, and every minute.
-Steve Lombard
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