Reflecting on 30 years as a professional journalist

When I started my career as a professional journalist, I never really gave any thought to how long I would be doing this for a career, but here I am 30 years later and still going.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

On Friday, May 14, 1993, I had my first job interview with the London Sentinel Echo just a few hours before my friends Richie and Karrie Faison got married. The high school sweethearts are still going strong in case anyone is wondering.

A week later Publisher Darrell Hathcock brought me in a for a second interview and offered me a job as a reporter at the then three days a week publication. I was so happy and excited that it didn’t even occur to me to try and negotiate salary. I just took the first thing he offered.

On May 24, 1993, I began my first day as a reporter for the Sentinel Echo.

While I was passionate about journalism back then and loved reporting, writing and taking pictures, I was miserable at that job.

I soon got to the point where every morning I would literally lay in bed for 15 to 20 minutes muttering to myself over and over, “I don’t want to go to work today. I don’t want to go to work today.” Finally, I would reach the point where I would say to myself, “There are going to be worse days than this that you don’t want to go to work,” and then I got up and got dressed.

Had I stayed at the Sentinel Echo for too long, I doubt I would have stayed in journalist for too many years. I know that I wouldn’t have made it 30 years.

A few months later, the publisher at the Times Tribune, who had gotten tired of me scooping his daily newspaper three times a week (true story…LOL), told his managing editor to give me a call and see if I was interested in a job there. I was living with my parents at the time and didn’t have a listed telephone number so she called and left me a message at the Sentinel Echo.

I went down there for an interview, and started a couple of weeks later. I stayed there for about 14 months, but can’t say that I was overly happy there either.

Then Susie Hart, who was a reporter at the News Journal, announced she was leaving to take a job over at the chamber of commerce, and Don Estep reached out to me about a job at the News Journal.

I came over and interviewed. I slept on the offer overnight and accepted.

It turned out to be one of the best decisions that I ever made aside from asking my wonderful wife, Cecelia, to marry me.

I found a home at the News Journal.

My co-workers became a second family to me although a pretty dysfunctional family at that…LOL.

Early in my career, I had dreams of making it to the big time or what I viewed as the big time and maybe getting a job at some place like the Lexington Herald Leader or the Louisville Courier Journal.

After a few years here, I quit having that dream.

I found a place where I was happy and content.

I liked my co-workers. I liked most of the people that I reported about too. I still do.

I also still like the job most days, but I can’t say that I have the passion for it that I did 30 years ago when I first started.

When I told our sports editor Trever Sherman that I was writing this column, he asked if I was going to conclude it with something along the lines of “that’s it, I’m out of here.”

Not quite.

I’m not planning to hang it up any time soon, but I don’t know that I have another 30 years in me either. You see and hear a lot of things in this job that you can’t unsee or unhear. It takes a toll.

I may still have another decade or possibly two in me though. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.