Having grown up in the era of the Watergate scandal, and consequently following the drama that surrounded journalism’s new ’stars’ like Woodward and Bernstein (and later, Janet Cooke), I’ve long been fascinated by the inner workings and politics of the newsroom. So, while I watched with the rest of my nation in horror and grief as the events at Virginia Tech unfolded last week, I found myself drawn frequently not to the main story of violence and bloodshed (which, honestly, I can hardly bear to read or watch) but to the sidebar stories of how the Blacksburg events unfolded in the media.

Immediately two things struck me, and have already been written about at length: 1). the traditional news media were being relegated to a secondary role while those directly involved in Monday’s events turned to social media such as MySpace and Facebook to post photos, seek answers, and ultimately, sadly, to express condolences. And 2). NBC news had, with one bad decision, become indelibly linked to the tragedy by burning their logo into the images that the mass murderer had sent them.

The first of these observations represents the beginning of a trend, away from formerly trusted establishment news sources and toward more personal, in-the-moment tools that will shape our understanding of events in ways we probably cannot even imagine at this point. The second of them represents the culmination of the major media’s obsession with macabre news packaging and quest for status as the go-to source.

My thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of those murdered on April 16. I have no words… there are no words…. that will comfort or heal them. My hope is, that through all of this, those who seek to tell the stories of humanity will once again find their soul and use their God-given talents to report, and sometimes interpret, without adding to the pain.

“It’s only when you hit your 40′s that you can look back at a picture of yourself when you were in your 20′s and realize just how much potential really lay ahead.”

That’s a paraphrasing of a remark I heard somewhere – on the radio I think – that really hit home. And it’s so true. You really don’t understand, when you’re 24 or 25, just how important your choices are to your future. And then, when you’re in your 40′s, suddenly you start asking yourself , “What the hell did I do with the last 20 years?? Why am I not who I thought I would be?” And if you happen to come across a picture of yourself from, say, your college days, you probably gasp and think, “Look how YOUNG I looked!” And the reason it’s so surprising, I think, is precisely because you were innocent and hopeful as well as young in years.

I guess I’ve been thinking about this lately because my dad is becoming more and more afflicted by his age. He will be 75 this year, and up until a few years ago he was a “young” older person, both in body and mind. Then we discovered he had liver disease, and then that he’s too old to be considered for a transplant. So now we wait, and deal periodically with the type of situation we had today where he hadn’t taken his medicine for a couple of days and became slow-moving, slow-speaking, and generally very confused. I had to go and pick him up from where he had driven himself, because he wasn’t well enough to drive home.

I wonder if he is looking back at his life with the same pride… and appreciation… and forgiveness (for small things, as he is a loving if imperfect man)… that I feel when I think about the home he helped make for my siblings and I. It’s funny that the quote that makes me think of him is about photographs, because he is a photographer. He used to shoot a lot of weddings – young people who have no idea how much potential really lies ahead.

Overheard in the elevator, while on my way home from today:

“We were looking at her pictures and laughing because, you know, times change. I mean, everybody’s pictures are going to look funny someday, you can’t change that.”