For anyone who’s worked in journalism, there’s little that’s quite as exhilarating as breaking a news story. Whether you’re reporting on a major international story or one that’s only interesting to a single small town, it’s a huge adrenaline rush to pound out an article on deadline. That’s true even when it’s not necessarily an exclusive. But when you think you’ve got it first, it’s even more exciting.
I had what was probably the last “scoop” of my full-time career this week. It happened when a product I’d been invited to test privately went public without any big press announcement from the company. So, I was able to report that news (probably) first.
This was more a matter of being a well-known member of a specific programming community than any investigative reporting skill on my part. Still, it was a professional rush to be the one to inform people that Posit (formerly RStudio) – still best known for creating the RStudio coding editor/environment – is creating a new coding platform that was opening for public testing.
Not exactly the Pentagon Papers, but the story got a lot of attention from the R community, both on social media and InfoWorld pageviews. And I realized that this is probably the last time I’ll have one of these in my full-time career.
I’ve had fewer since 2017, when I was moved from a full-time journalism role at Computerworld to a hybrid data science/journalism role at Computerworld’s parent company, Foundry (formerly IDG Communications). Still, fewer isn’t none. And whenever I got to work on a big story, I enjoyed it. A lot.
Now I have a month to come to terms with the fact that I won’t have any more of these unless I decide to do some serious freelance writing. And even then, there’s no guarantee.
Yes I can code my own interesting projects, cover news for my little neighborhood blog, and journal here at My Next Chapter, but I won’t be breaking news read by tens of thousands of people anymore unless my next chapter includes spending a lot of time in ways similar to my full-time career. And it will be awhile before I might be ready for that. If ever.
I’m going to miss more than the people and my professional persona when I retire.
Even if I won’t miss most of the meetings.
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