My College Essay

Here is my own college essay, completely unedited.  In retrospect, I think it could have benefitted from Elmore Leonard's exhortation to "cut out the parts that people skip," or from Fitzgerald's warning that, "An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”

But I think it stands up well a decade after the fact, although it's quaint to remember the days when John Gipson was on MSNBC, Lou Dobbs was a financial reporter, Fashion News was a show on CNN, and you could go into "news withdrawal" when you went on vacation.   

My Life as a News Junkie - Andy Weiss

They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.  Well here goes: Hi, my name is Andy and I’m a news junkie.  Nobody ever says, “I want to be a news junkie when I grow up,” but here I am and this is my story.

I guess it all started with my parents.  They never talked to me about the dangers of news addiction.  My folks were casual news watchers themselves, and like most of my friends’ parents, they would watch Live at Five at the dinner table and make no attempt to hide it from me.  At first, I thought it was torture to sit through all that boring talk about Congress that I didn’t understand anyway.  All I wanted to watch was Saved by the Bell and Batman, and there I was all alone with a plate full of carrots and no remote control!  But over time I learned to like the carrots and I suppose I just got use to Live at Five.  

When, after many years of sitting through The Nightly News, I began to take an interest in current events, my parents even encouraged me.  I suppose they saw it as a rite of passage.  To them it meant that their little boy was growing up.  And to me it meant that I had something in common with Mom and Dad.  If my parents had known what news addiction would eventually do to me, I’m certain they would have never gotten me started in the first place.  But I can’t blame them; they didn’t know I couldn’t just watch a little without getting sucked in.

My passing interest in the evening news stayed casual for a year or two.  Everything was fine until my parents brought cable TV into our house.  It was April of 1996 and at the time the only programming that held my interest was MTV’s The Real World and The Grind.  Occasionally I would flip to CNN just to check in on the rest of the world.  In retrospect, CNN was a gateway channel to harder news channels like MSNBC and the FOX News Channel.  I kept up with MTV for another year or so, but I stopped paying attention after the San Francisco cast of The Real World.  As CNN graduated from a rest stop on a channel surf to a destination of choice, I slowly became acquainted with the likes of Ann Coulter, Bernard Shaw and Bill O’Reilly.  It wasn’t very long before I was watching C-SPAN straight.  I remember times when I would come home from school and plug right into the US Senate Live.  It’s sad to think that I’ve even sat through an entire quorum call!

As I became a regular, my fingers would become used to pressing certain channels on the remote in search of something intelligent.  My impulse would be to scan through the regular sequence of news channels and before long it became a reflex.  First I check CNN - 33.  It is always the best bet because of Crossfire and World Report.  But if the well is dry on 33 and all they have is Fashion News I routinely move onto CNBC - 34.  This is often a long shot but I always check it because I am loyal to Chris Matthews.  Next on my list is C-SPAN 2 - 35, followed by C-SPAN - 44, but they are usually too busy with American Presidents and Road to the White House 2000.  If I haven’t yet found anything of interest I scope out the FOX News Channel (We Report, You Decide) - 45.  My last stop before getting desperate is always MSNBC - 52.  But when it is a slow news day I can find little comfort in the lightning round of John Gipson’s News Chat, and so I have gone so far as to sometimes watch the BBC on NJN or a Ken Burns documentary on PBS.  You know you have a problem when you begin to recognize members of British Parliament.

Around the beginning of sophomore year, I started news dealing.  After turning a few US History classes into full hour debates, my teacher convinced me to start writing for the school paper.  I would take in information from the news wholesale and spread it across school in my own column.  Soon I got a reputation for being pretty well informed on current events issues and kids started approaching me with questions about this or that, which I was more than happy to answer.  Quoting a PBS special on the subject, I patiently explained the situation in Kosovo to a friend writing a report.  After Bill Richardson appeared on Meet the Press, I felt comfortable enough to sit down with a Chinese friend and discuss the Cox report with her.  An interesting piece on BBC World proved to be an icebreaker as my Latin teacher and I traded points on the Kurdish Question in Turkey and Iraq.  Even my parents, the ones who got me hooked on news in the first place, wanted a piece of the action for themselves.  As such, I carved out an hour of my weekend and related to them the entire impeachment saga.  Soon I graduated to larger venues, writing letters to the editor of my local newspaper and calling into the same news shows that supplied me with my information.  I realized that there was quite a market out there for news dealers, and it felt good to know that I had something people wanted.

But all the benefits of being a news dealer are outweighed by the shame of being a news junkie myself.  My news addiction has made me do some pretty low things in my life.  From time to time I come to dinner early, turn the TV onto CNN, and steal the remote so nobody can change the channel, just so I can fit in some Crossfire before my plans for the night.  I look back on those times with a teary eye.  To think I could have sunk so low!  But it all hit a low point in mid 1998.  I found myself awake at three in the morning, watching Book TV on C-SPAN 2.  And the worst part is I went on Amazon.com the next day and bought the book!  And I liked it, too!

Last week, my parents caught me watching Moneyline with Lou Dobbs.  I knew I was in trouble, and I tried to tell them I was following a stock for a friend.  But they knew from the get go that I was just watching for information’s sake, and that’s why I’m here today.  I don’t want to be a slave to MSNBC any more!  I don’t want to go in withdrawal every time I go on vacation!  I want to take back control of my life and return to the bliss of ignorance.  I want to break my news addiction, and I know I need help.