...and as I was messing around with it I noticed that the feeling of owning the thing is exactly the same as the joy I felt when I was ten years old and my dad surprised me with my first pocket knife on a Cub Scouts camping trip. It's the joy of having a useful pocket-sized bauble that's heavy for its size and cool to the touch. I recommend it to everybody.
But the joy of seeing your writing in the newspaper is incomparable. The thought that a big company spent money to print thousands of copies of my words and my byline (and Michael's excellent photos) tickles me for all sorts of basically egomaniacal reasons.
Does anyone get into any form of writing for reasons that aren't at least a little egomaniacal? Sure, you always balance it with generosity of one kind or another—to readers, to editors, to people you interview—but the decision to write doesn't come from a purely generous impulse, and what's more, it has no basis in the logic of business. It's a decision you make if recognition is a bigger motivator for you than helping others, or money. (If you're lucky, you still get the money and maybe help people as you go.)
Being a journalist, I think, means tempering all that natural egomania with a huge amount of integrity. That's as opposed to being a writer of fiction. Those guys are actually hindered by integrity, which probably is why the best ones all either drank, or killed themselves.
All this is to say that getting bylined in the paper is a complicated joy, and one I wouldn't recommend to everyone. But if you're honest enough to achieve it, and self-centered enough to appreciate it, it's pretty much the best.
