The only thing I'd ever done with news was to read copy sitting at the microphone in the studio.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I became a journalist partly so that I wouldn't ever have to rely on the press for my information.
If the breaking news event has something to do with young people, specifically with MTV's audience, there was a higher chance that I would actually go cover it with a television camera instead of just write the story myself and read it on the air.
It turned out I really didn't like journalism. I wanted to make up stories, not cover real events.
Reporters do decide what is news, but they don't invent it, even if they sometimes become part of the story by risking their lives in a danger zone, as in the case of ABC's Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt.
Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.
In most cases, the news is not really news. But in some cases, discoveries are made and should be listened to.
I didn't like being in a newsroom all the time.
The challenge remains a simple one: to write news that stays news.
I would listen to how they told the story, to what elements they used, to how it sounded, and that's who I patterned myself after, the people who were on CBS News.
I've made this decision not to talk to the press about anything that's gone on in my life, but just to write music about it. They can interpret it themselves.