Join morning radio, do hard news?

My first six years at The Whig-Standard, I worked as a writer and reporter. I was a music columnist and a news reporter who covered everything from Ryan Malcolm's meteoric rise on the first season of Canadian Idol, to country pie sales, to the Sept. 11 attacks, to the Juno Awards, to breaking crime stories like bikers in the city and standoffs in suburbia. I did some investigative work and wrote humour columns.

Then, I wanted a break and I became an editor.

At first, I loved my new gig. I came up with story ideas for other reporters and supervised the production of The Whig's entertainment magazine. I took part in editors' story meetings. I got to represent the paper at community events, like high school career days. And then, I began to see how much stuff that wasn't "journalism" that I had to do: I sorted mail. I laid out the paper's three crosswords, paginating each tiny clue into perfect columns.**** I typed into our computer system community listings for charity walks and band shows. (Note: Listings are key to a local paper, though, so I was quite anal about getting them perfect). I answered a lot of voicemail. I answered a lot of e-mails. I spent hours on the phone trying to get publicists to send us hi-res jpegs.

I suspect it's like a teacher working her way up to becoming a principal in a school. Some days, you just want to teach. In my case, some days, I just wanted to write again.

So, it's funny that it took leaving newspapers and joining the K-Rock 105.7 Morning Krew to do news again. The morning show came up with the idea of doing the story of Queen's University professor Chris Mueller, who is a cancer researcher. He has a degenerative liver disease and is looking for a live liver donor. The family has basically exhausted their family and friends' potential and needed to look elsewhere, so we invited Mueller's wife, local artist Sally Milne, to our show to ask our "friends", our listeners, to think about becoming an organ donor. We also talked to Dr. Frank Markel of the Trillium Gift of Life Network about organ donation in Ontario and what it takes to become a donor.

By the end of our show on Wednesday, at 10 a.m., we already had listeners - one in New York state - calling and e-mailling us asking how they could help, or get more information about donating a portion of their liver (which, by the way, grows back).

Yes, we do silly stuff on the morning show. We baked Neil Young concert tickets into pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and we gave out lucky lottery tickets on St. Paddy's Day. But today? We did a story that really matters.

Playing reporter was rejuvenating. Loved it.

Read more on our K-Rock Morning Krew blog, including a statement by Sally Milne about her husband and how you can help Chris Mueller and other people waiting for an organ donation.

**** I mean absolutely no disrespect to hardcore crossword lovers like my mother. I appreciate the skill they take, just not the pain in my wrists from making those teeny tiny clues look so damn perfect each and every week.

It wasn't all serious this morning though. We did talk about panties. Just for a minute though. :)