Ask me why I got in newspapers and I’ll give you a short answer to a short question.

For the wrong reason. Writing.

Like all aspiring Hemingways and Steinbecks I fancied myself a writer and not a reporter.

There is a difference.

When rrspin.com blooms I will take a reporter over a writer. I will take someone who can gather information over someone getting into this business because they want to write a novel.

I want to write a novel and do have a manuscript I’ve been working on for five or six years. It’s an embellished piece about my life in community newspapers from the absurd to the abstract.

Back to reporters. The reporter should be able to coax someone into giving them information while the writer should be someone who can coax an agent into a book deal.

The reporter respects off the record and sees it as a way to develop sources. The writer doesn’t think much about off the record because it’s a novel and a few name and place changes here and there and no one will know.

A reporter observes as does a writer but the reporter watches for facts while a writer observes for a good novel.

Reporters report what they see. While writers do the same, for the novelist what they see and write could be twisted and stretched into something they wish to see.

After barely passing quantitative analysis and taking intermediate accounting three times for my business degree, I knew the other side was screaming to get out. I knew I enjoyed communications, knew I could write some and envisioned becoming a copy writer with a big ad agency. Talk about dirty politics. You are essentially treated like scum if you don’t come from a noted school.

I pursued a journalism minor and enjoyed the classes and flourished in creative writing.

Still, I thought I was a writer.

That would change after taking a job in California for a trucking magazine. Why California? Simple. I was following one of the many I believed to be the girl of my dreams.

Time passes. The relationship fizzles. I leave. Come to Murfreesboro, work a job as a construction paymaster with BE&K in Franklin.

Franklin would be my first newspaper job as a sports editor and the publisher asked me the wrong question. Could I write?

Now I wish he asked me if I could report. I might not have gotten the job if he had asked me that.

A seasoned veteran was essentially my boss. He knew I could write. He also knew, I think, I couldn’t report. Soon after being hired I would learn to report because the Isle of Wight County beat reporter left.

John Heseltine, a gruff New Englander, who mysteriously told me goodbye one night and went back to Maine, taught me how to be a reporter, how to listen for information, what questions to ask.

Under his supervision, I would scoop the Newport News Daily Press, the Smithfield Times and the Virginian-Pilot. Not every day but occasionally. I was becoming a reporter. The writing helped but listening for information was better.

I enjoyed seeing the competition follow up on several of my stories after I broke them and I have won four awards, not for writing, but reporting.

Well, fast forwarding through the bad stuff here we are and I’ve been in the business for 20 years.

I’ve seen writers and I’ve seen reporters and when it comes to the news I still say I’ll take a reporter over a writer any day — Lance Martin.