Voicemail left for me by a source, on a colleague's answering machine. Imagine the voice is about 80 years old. I kind of love this man.

"I'm looking for the young new reporter lady...this is NAME about ISSUE here...and she was writing the article and I can't find her um phone number here in News Republic, I hate these *doggone* program things that you can't get to the people when you want to talk to 'em...so I just don't have her number so I'll have to get through to her tomorrow, thank you, bye bye."

It's not that reporters love pain/suffering, it's that they know(or at least strongly suspect) there are always problems everywhere and they feel like they've done a good, thorough, useful job when they find one and can write something about it. "If it bleeds, it leads," is actually a therapy maxim for reporters who have been writing too many cheery, uncontroversial community member profiles.