It's a truth of beat reporting: The bigger your subject gets, the bigger you get.
I think it's my job to walk my beat and find the people I cover who have questions that should be answered.
I don't miss being a reporter as a job, but I do miss the everyday interaction with the front line of law enforcement. I still have a cadre of cops who keep me up to date, but I don't have the access I used to.
I didn't care for beat reporting, covering the same thing day after day - short attention span.
When I worked in Los Angeles covering hard news, very often when something important would happen I'd be off in the woods covering something unimportant, which was more interesting to me.
I went back to the States and started at a small newspaper in Riverside County, California, covering the police; I was making $280 a week covering the police.
Only two journalists followed the team around.
I shifted my career when I was 44 to quit the Washington beats. I had a great Washington beat, a series of them, and I quit to start my tech column, which was a different kind of tech column.
When I was at a newspaper, I knew what an opportunity that was, and I religiously protected my time on the cop beat.
