Getting religion about being agnostic

Nothing excites me as much as learning that a B2B journalist has become re-excited about our profession.
So you can imagine how pleased I was to read a piece from the editor of Healthcare IT News, in which she talks about how the Web allowed her and the rest of the staff to reconnect with the joy of breaking daily news. "We started acting like daily journalists again – eager to be first and best with the story. The shift has done us good. I guess we’ve become “media agnostic.” But, it’s more than that. We picked up the pace. We read more, we called more CIOs and doctors, health insurers and policy makers, we wrote more, we understood better. We dug deeper."

I have tried -- and have often failed -- to convince my fellow B2B reporters and editors that the world of new media offers us a chance to reconnect with the reasons we first picked up a notebook.
And I'm going to take this opportunity to try one more time.
Journalism isn't a job. It is a calling. There are a thousand other professions that are more stable and more lucrative. This field will often break your heart. And being a journalist almost certainly means that you will always struggle financially.
But we got into this game because of who we are. We need this. We need to tell stories and break news. And we need to do it better and faster today than we did yesterday. That's who we are.

If you don't love this profession as you once did, it's not because the profession has changed. You have lost your love because you have lost your way.
But I promise you, the Web can you lead you back home.
Just ask the folks at Healthcare IT News.

tags: journalism, b2b, media, trade press, magazines, newsletters, business media