By Ahmet Abdulaziz ….
Have you noticed that journalists are in fact crazy people? If you have not yet realised that then I am sure you have not met a real journalist yet. Journalism is such a field, that it makes one a total different person, quite different from others around him.
Have you noticed that a journalist works 24 hours, 7 days a week, the whole year. Even if one who works in a 
newspaper for a salary, get an off day a week, I am sure they feel themselves at work even on their off days. Even though not at their desk, their mind remains busy in chasing the events. Their mind remains busy in searching for new stories, new headings, new layout.
The way a journalist leads his life is simply very different. The way he looks at anything, everything is totally different from other people.
Just have a look around you. Very simple things that we see, and let it go unnoticed as being unimportant, may become a totally new story for a journalist. Even the falling of leaves at the start of autumn may fill a two column story of a journalist. Crossing the road, the passing by of a bus, the traffic lights, the people going in different directions. All these are possible subjects of news items for a journalist.
One may ask why does a journalist live such a life? There is a very simple answer to it. As I had written in the past too, a journalist always has the blank pages of the newspaper in his mind. In his mind he is always placing news items, stories, photos, their headings etc in different pages. The journalist spends the whole of his/her time filling those pages. The most critical point is that publication of a newspaper, may it be the printed one or online, always requires a journalist to run against time, to fill those blank pages before the prescribed time. Interestingly, by the time a journalist completes filling all the pages of the newspaper, the blank pages of the next issue start pressurising him in the same way as the previous one did. So the pressure to fill the pages according to the deadlines never ease.
So there is no way out for a journalist, even to rest properly.
The latest example is of Chris Elliott and Margaret Sheard. They are the mastermind of CyprusScene.com. They work really very hard to keep posting the news, and to bring the newspaper every weekend.
Chris had major back surgery recently and was in hospital. So the whole burden to keep CyprusScene.com going and publishing of the weekly online e-newspaper fell on Margaret’s shoulders.
The way Margaret dealt with all this during the absence of Chris is really commendable. However, when Chris returned back home, he was still not able to sit properly, and I did not know how could he manage to contribute to the e-newspaper. I knew it was totally impossible for a journalist to sit idle. So despite all handicaps he started helping Margaret.
But then all of a sudden Margaret got her collarbone broken. She was not able to use her right arm and hand. So working on computer was impossible. But being a journalist, she too could not afford sitting idle. Still in pain she continued assisting the already not fully recovered Chris, by reading and editing the news.. She started doing what she could with her left hand, in order to meet the deadline for the last week’s e-newspaper.
Just two days before the publication of the e-newspaper I had suggested to Chris to give the newspaper a break of two weeks. He listened to my suggestion and simply laughed. I knew what he meant. So he did what a journalist does. Both half fit Chris and Margaret worked hard to bring the weekly CYPRUSSCENE.COM e-newspaper on time, last week.
They really worked as real journalists. Hats off to their dedication and devotion to journalism.
This is why I say that journalists are crazy people.
