-By Lauren Evans for NPR Opinion-

This weekend, I bought a newspaper.

Sure, I’ve bought them in the past. But this time, it was more than the simple business transaction it used to be. When I handed over my $1.50, I swelled with the same sense of noble do-gooding I feel when I donate money to save an endangered animal or a threatened rainforest. Sure, I believe in those causes, but right now, I think journalism needs to be reminded that I believe in it, too.

I have wanted to be a journalist since I was 11 years old. OK, that’s not quite true. I wanted to sit at a desk with a camera pointed at me, my hair perfectly coiffed and my power suit starched, reading the news in a way that suggested my deep-seated distress for the kitten in the tree one minute and the heartfelt accolades for the girl who won the local spelling bee the next. To me, journalism was a combination of deftly executed facial expressions, all subtle brow wrinkles and head tilts.

It wasn’t until I got to college that my ambitions took a loftier turn. Since my university lacked a broadcast journalism major, I reluctantly enrolled in the next closest thing: print journalism. Though my dreams of staring meaningfully into the camera might not come to pass, the glory of my byline radiating from atop the page would suffice. I pictured the trench coats I would wear as I prowled the campus for the “scoop.” I pictured myself using words like “scoop.” This possibility was more inviting than the starched power suit: I was sold.

A number of journalism classes later, I was disappointed to discover that journalism wasn’t the glamorous profession I’d envisioned. After covering such trifling events as “parent’s weekend,” I began a mental tally of the number of these stories I’d have to cover before I could expect to see my face plastered beside Maureen Dowd’s. I won’t bore you with the calculations, but the answer was, succinctly, a lot.

But I discovered something. Journalism — real journalism — means finding the interesting, the obscure, the truth in the seemingly banal. Anyone can report facts. A journalist looks past the facts and asks “why?”

There is nothing glamorous about sitting in front of a computer at 3 a.m, surrounded by mounds of scribbled notes, with a blank page staring at you, the cursor blinking expectantly like a foot tapping, waiting for you to type something true and real, something that captures the essence of all those notes. It is a grave responsibility. It is a daunting responsibility, and nothing is further removed from the glow of the studio lights or the flick of the touch-up brush.

When I handed over my $1.50 for my newspaper, I did it because I believe in journalism. Sure, I love newspapers. They make handy fly swatters, and I can think of no better material with which to housetrain my hypothetical puppy. But I don’t care if my news comes printed on a souvenir grain of rice or expelled in smoke from the back of a plane. To obsess over the delivery is to miss the point. No matter how it’s told, journalism will live on. There are enough people willing to do the unglamorous dirty work — who want to know “why” so much that it doesn’t matter that it’s difficult, lonely and often thankless. Journalists have endured torture and imprisonment. You think these people are going to stop telling stories because the paper is gone? Losing the paper isn’t going to silence journalism. As long as there are stories, there are journalists who will risk life and limb to tell them.

“How do you know?” you ask, the incredulous reporter that you are. “Who are these people who are willing to do so much, just for a story?”

This is one “who” that’s easy to answer: Because I’m one of them.

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