(Flickr, sskennel)

I’m back. I won’t make any excuses for my absence, but I do have an explanation. I have willfully ignored this little corner of the web for months as I adjusted to becoming a reporter again.

In December, I accepted a job covering Boca Raton and unincorporated Palm Beach County west of the city for the Sun Sentinel. The time since has been a crazy adjustment period in which I hustled to learn the territory, connect with sources, hone my writing and relearn all the style minutiae I forgot after college. It’s been an obviously stressful period, filled with daily plunges into self-doubt and glimmers of success, but it’s also been the most fun I’ve had in my journalism career.

I was a reporter and columnist at my college paper, but I chose design when it came time to get a job. I was a solid designer, and I enjoyed the work. I believed then, as I do now, that presentation can make or break a reader’s understanding of a story. But at least a sliver of the job’s appeal was its anonymity. Designers don’t get bylines, nor angry calls from readers and sources.

Reporting is personal. Every day you ask people to trust you with their stories, their ideas, their passions, their trials. At the end of the day, you sift through those, taking bits of each and brewing them into a few hundred words that’s supposed to encapsulate an issue. Usually, the result is a coherent catalog of point and counterpoint. Occasionally, it’s magic — corruption is uncovered, darkness is illuminated, humanity shines through the cacophony.

That magic is the only reason anyone does this job, I think. Gathering and distilling the news is endless, exhausting work that requires a constant balance between connecting with people and maintaining critical distance from them. Movies, novels and TV glamorize the thrill of the chase, the adrenaline spike, of reporting, but it’s an unsustainable and ultimately unfulfilling high. No matter how fast I’m speeding along with the story, my gaze must trend toward the horizon to stay on course.

“The media” are reviled by citizens and politicians alike, but most journalists do this work because we care deeply about our communities, our government and our society. We adhere to stringent ethical standards, and we are guided by the idea that the freedoms we are granted are a public trust. We stake our effort on the idea that fair, accurate reporting and analysis helps people make better choices. I’m happy now to stake my name on that idea too.

Now that I am on my feet as a reporter, I plan to begin updating this blog regularly again. I set up some new pages to feature some of my writing and multimedia work in the portfolio section, too, if you want to check it out.