Should reporters relocate for a job?

The subject of today's blog post wasn't hard to come up with: I recently made the decision to relocate for a job opportunity.

However, even nearly two weeks into the job I'm still grappling with how to explain my decision-making process. It's sort of like someone throws you in a forest and tells you to find your way back to camp. You know you were at camp; you know you're only 3 miles away; but you also know you don't recognize anything where you are.

Moving is one of the most stressful experiences in life, and so is taking a new job. Combined, you might as well get a divorce or grieve the loss of your puppy. I haven't researched this, but I imagine it's even harder as one ages.

When I was 39 I drove across the country for a job in New York. It had been my lifelong dream to work in the Big Apple, having grown up on Woody Allen movies and fancied myself a kind of Mariel Hemingway-esque character. I would grow sophisticated on the Upper East Side and learn to sip cosmopolitans with Carrie and friends.

New York lived up to the billing - and then some. I moved for New York, not the job. In fact, the boss-to-be at the time said to me: "Don't move here just for us." I said, "I won't." When that job didn't work out, I still had New York, or more accurately Connecticut (where I was living).

It's far trickier when you find yourself moving someplace you never imagined yourself living. While most of my friends and family members imagine I never really wanted to work in Wyoming (where I once interviewed) or rural Massachusetts (where I also interviewed), the fact is, huge parts of my heart resonate in both areas. I drove through Wyoming on the aforementioned trek and found its wild openness invigorating. I also fancy myself a true New Englander now after over a dozen years in Connecticut.

Falls Church, Virginia, where I am now, was never on my radar. Working in DC wasn't either. I'd only been to the capitol thrice, each time a fun experience, but it seemed more like a place to visit rather than live. Yet when I told people I was moving here for work, resoundingly, everyone projected their excitement on to me.

"Oh! Washington is such an exciting place! Enjoy the transition. So many monuments, so much history, so much to do!"

None of that factored into my decision to take this job, though. I took the job because I needed a full-time position, liked the person who would be my boss, and figured at least I'd be (more or less) still in the Northeast. It bugged me, I must admit, that I was still secretly pining for New York.

Yet as a journalist, nothing is more enriching than having to do as I did - pick up and go, learn to traverse new terrain, make new friends, learn new mores and memorize new Metro procedures (took me a week to remember to slap my Smart Card on the turnstile both when going into the terminal and leaving).

In the long run, having to be lonely in a new place -- yes, I said it -- can only feed the very mill that drives the machine that makes me a journalist. Without friends here, I will be forced to meet new people. I will be forced to see things in a new way. I will get lost. I will cry. I will fall.

So far, some days have been very rocky, while at times, it's been ethereal. I love noticing new types of trees here in Virginia, or seeing a different busker at the Falls Church Metro after work each day.

And who knows, maybe in time I won't keep comparing every citizen I see to the bustling populous of Manhattan or the refined, good-hearted New Englanders I left behind. Maybe. But then again, it's too soon to tell. Photos: top - the author in front of the White House soon after arriving in the area in May, 2017; bottom - on a cruise on Harbor Cruise Line of the East River, photo by Jason Sagebiel.

Eye rolls, smirks, and sighs must stop

Journalists are tasked with holding persons in positions of power accountable. We are also supposed to remain objective at all times, at least when we're on the job. This is probably easier for print journalists who can scowl or laugh with colleagues behind closed doors as they hammer out their latest treatise for print or online consumption.

Broadcast journalists have a steeper hill to climb, though, and that has never been more apparent than during the Trump era. While CNN's Wolf Blitzer does a sterling job keeping a poker face, Anderson Cooper recently and famously rolled his eyes when speaking to Kellyanne Conway and Jake Tapper frequently smirks during interviews.

CNN has a history of hiring reporters whose emotions are easy to read. Remember the Piers Morgan era and his passion for gun control? What about Don Lemon getting so drunk on New Year's Eve that it was embarrassing to watch? While these issues, one can argue, are morally poles apart from a journalistic perspective they are equally wrong. (Note, Lemon still works at CNN.)

Keeping a straight face is imperative, because to do otherwise shows the audience what the journalist is feeling and thinking. Eye roll? Cooper thought Conway was full of mullarkey. Tapper's smirk? It reads that he thinks he's better, more knowledgeable, and above the person he's interviewing. Notice how he doesn't assume that pose when interviewing someone he probably respects.

I like Tapper and Anderson, and 90 percent of the time, their passion for this profession fuels the best part of them and their journalism - asking incisive questions, surmounting perceived obstacles, striving for transparency and honesty.

Print journalists should also be careful, but the job is more subtle. Watch verbs and adjectives and other ways of subtly disclosing one's opinions. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from a producer was "use says". I was insisting that I could say things like "he demurred" or "he enthused". In strong journalism, a reporter mustn't color or slant the story. See the difference: "John said his daughter was his favorite." Versus: "John gushed that his daughter was his favorite."

With the current presidential administration the subject of daily controversy, it's time for journalists to hunker down and get to work. No one cares whether or not you think Sean Spicer will race toward you Melissa McCarthy-style from his podium or that you'd rather be marching on Washington than covering it.

These times call for all the truth we can muster. Rise to the challenge.

PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons Images, Pete Riches, 2011.