The man shook my hand when I offered it, but it was mostly an automatic reaction. He recognized me a moment later and the smile fell from his face. No kind words exchanged, no small talk. He appeared to regret the brief gesture, then he walked away.

Another awkward moment in the hot dog shop. Another cold reception in the world of newspaper readership.

I’m not complaining, mind you. When you write news, not everybody will gleefully shake your hand. A wizened editor once told me that very thing: If you’re a reporter and everybody loves you, you’re clearly doing something wrong.

So, now and then I encounter former associates who want nothing to do with me. Strangers occasionally scream and threaten violence. There are those who think I’m cheap and dirty, and others who call me a coldhearted ghoul.

I’m none of the above, but the business of journalism can sometimes be cold and it can sometimes be dirty.

Men and women awake to find their misdeeds screaming from headlines. Intimate details about private lives are exposed with precision. Few things are sacred when news is being dispensed.

Subjects of stories fume. Others become outraged by the press treatment of mothers and brothers, sisters and sons. They blame the writer whose name appears atop the story. They get to hating the industry of journalism altogether.

The hazards of a profession.
Job hazards
Lawyers have the same problem, and cops do, for sure. Schoolteachers, welfare workers, bill collectors and judges. Men and women whose duty is to exert some form of control over others’ lives. Some occupations invite resentment, no matter how efficiently the worker conducts business.

The pitfalls of a chosen career. There are a million lawyer jokes out there, and most of them are funny. Cops get snarled at, spit at and shot at by those who have come to resent the law. Schoolteachers face snarling, red-faced parents, and reporters are called vultures and threatened with lawsuits.

If everybody loves you, you’re doing something wrong. Yet, I know few people who delight in the spite they generate. Most want respect and admiration too, if they can get it. Reporters ultimately want trust.

They get that trust by tackling the ugly, treacherous stories, the way cops earn their keep by arresting those they’d rather not contend with. And now and then we face the heat for our boldness.

The man who shook my hand and then wished he hadn’t was a person I once dealt with regularly on the job. But there was a brief flurry of unfavorable stories in which his name appeared. Hard feelings developed like corrosion on a car battery.

The letters stopped

We were no longer professional friends who might share a nasty joke and a wonderful piece of gossip. Meeting in public places became awkward. Best that we don’t see each other at all.

Another handful of one-time associates gnash their teeth and sputter profanity at the sight of me. A few people who once called themselves fans of my work have changed their opinions drastically. A story too close to home, details they would have rather kept buried, and now I’m a vile scoundrel with no sense of decency or fairness whatsoever.

Some of this wrath was inspired by stories I knew would breed contempt from the get-go. Some of it was inadvertent. Such was the case with my most prolific letter-writer, whose ink suddenly ran dry when I wrote about the calamity in his life.

The writer felt I had misinterpreted the feelings expressed in one of his letters, and so chose to terminate the one-sided exchange. I feel bad about that one because it was not a story that was thrust upon me. It was a choice I had made, to examine his disquiet and offer up my own thoughts on it. Though he was never named, the perceived slight scalded my pen pal. His silence has been long and unbroken since.

I never inspired wrath when I was making kitchen countertops for a living, but I wasn’t precisely enamored of that career, either. I’d rather write stories that need to be told than put on another Formica end cap. Even if it means a few uncomfortable moments over a hot dog and fries.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.