I believe that in my role as an author and as a commander, I should look to every political extreme, no matter how far out on the fringe that it may seem, as a routine function of my professional existence -- as I have said in The Global Futurist Blog and in The Internationalist Page Blog, "What may seem absurd or extremist today may well become tomorrow's status quo."
Political considerations notwithstanding, this is a piece about the personal toll taken by assuming the job of being the loneliest kind of leader - an investigative reporter or journalist.
Not only do you have to unearth things that frighten you and display them in the naked critical light of day, but you are also the messenger;
and the news that you provide, if negative, generally gets associated with and occasionally blamed on the messenger. The article excerpt, which is very well-written follows...
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When I tell people what I do for a living, the most common response is, "But isn't it depressing???" My response: "Of course!"
Grappling with the news every day is an emotional sky-dive with a rickety parachute. But for each of us on Truthout's staff, it's a jump we must take.
When Truthout reporter Mike Ludwig told me he wanted to cover the brutal "gas rush" that has brought a fracking epidemic upon Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania, it was because he felt compelled to do so: he grew up in Ohio, and - watching his childhood stomping grounds fill up with fracking rigs - he couldn't simply stand by. Truthout's lead investigative reporter Jason Leopold has described his decade-long pull to report on the horrors of Guantanamo: "There's something about the crimes committed by the Bush administration in our name that haunts me." And a couple of weeks ago, after watching a gaggle of corporate apologists squawking about the greed of public schoolteachers on a local Chicago news station, I couldn't help staying up half the night to hammer out a column in defense of the teachers' rights and those of their students.
Truthout's content relations editor, Leslie Thatcher, once put it this way: "While our task will never be completed, neither may we ever desist." We can't not do this work. It's not because we love to wallow in the murk of disaster and political frustration. It's because we believe ardently that a more equitable, more humane world is possible, and we must expose the murk in order to climb toward that brighter future.
You, our community, are our partners in this journey toward justice, because you care too much to sit idly by.
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One of the greatest motivators for leadership is the existence of a problem which must be solved for the benefit of that leader and for all of Humanity, as a whole. Every investigative reporter or journalist is a leader, without support troops, and facing life-threatening perils as well as emotionally-devastating truths every single day.
The greatest commanders not only have their respective missions -- but they are also champions of Humanity, compelled by an obsession to do what they believe is truly right.
Douglas E. Castle for The Taking Command Blog
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