According to the interwebz, this day has been around since 1998, which is fitting for me since that’s the year I met my husband. We worked at rival newspapers and almost never discussed work.  Then we went to work for the same congressional news outlet and talked about nothing but work. Then we both left the news business and only hugged newspeople at gatherings of friends.

Being a newsperson, to me, is very much a profession rather than a lifestyle, although I have friends who would disagree. You might keep some of the habits, and (at least among the people I know) you keep a lot of the cynicism, but you don’t keep the label. I know I was more than happy to give up the hours and the relentless fire hose of New Information.

I suspect that most people aren’t too keen on hugging anyone in the media these days—nobody knows what to believe or where to turn for reliable information. The company I work for did a whole thing about the concept of Truth Decay and how it is accelerating in these modern times. You can check it out if you’re so inclined.

I guess there are people who yearn for the days of Walter Cronkite or William F. Buckley or H. L. Mencken. I dunno. I think I yearn for the days (long before I was born) of two local newspapers when people read both and found the truth in between them. Can you hug a printing press?