The Waiting Place

Remember this poem by Dr Seuss? For those who wonder what's it like to be a journalist, this about sums it up...

"Congratulations! Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away!
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look’em over with care. About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.”
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you’re too smart to go down a not-so-good street.
And you may not find any you’ll want to go down. In that case, of course, you’ll head straight out of town. It’s opener there in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsy as you.
And when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along.
You’ll start happening too.

Oh! The Places You’ll Go!
You’ll be on your way up! You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.

You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed. You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead. Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best. Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don’t.
Because, sometimes, you won’t.

I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you.
You can get all hung up in a prickle-ly perch. And your gang will fly on. You’ll be left in a Lurch.
You’ll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. And the chances are, then, that you’ll be in a Slump.

And when you’re in a Slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked. A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin! Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in? How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And if you go in, should you turn left or right…or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite? Or go around back and sneak in from behind? Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race, down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
And grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place…for people just waiting."

In the frenetic, overly competitive world of journalism, this is the place where anxious freelancers rock back and forth, waiting, waiting, waiting, for busy overstretched editors to reply to their pitches. It's not unlike waiting for your teenage boyfriend to call.

I've found an amazing, exclusive story. It's a cracker. It wakes me up at night. And yet, the publication I was counting on might be able to offer me a one-page slot in June. Might. They did warn me about slashed pages, crushed budgets, a queue for Africa stories, departing editors, but I believed - foolishly - that if I came up with a great story, it'd get in there. The Red Sea would part. More fool me.

Anyway, we'll always have blogging. The placebo for the world's storytellers in this so-called information age.

Today is the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. Last night the BBC World News ran a segment where the journalist who covered the release of Mandela came back to reflect on how South Africa had changed. Except he didn’t. He briefly interviewed Archbishop Desmond Tutu; Mandela’s former driver and bodyguard; a man in a township in Cape Town who now owns his own shop; and then he strolled nonchalantly past a few shacks and mused that people still live in poverty, but at least they are free.

Why bother coming at all? If that’s all there is to say after 20 years, you may as well have stayed at home and spared the carbon footprint. Tell us a real story.