All journalists get desensitised to some of the things they write about, and I'm no exception.
However this week I genuinely found some of the stories in my newspapers very depressing.
The main talking point in Chesham is the fact paedophile Richard Webb was finally bought to justice many years after abusing young boys. He was jailed for nine years for sexually abusing the boys in the 1980s and 1990s. The words of Judge Seddon Cripps rang through my head: "These are people's lives you have ruined forever."
In the Advertiser we carried the story of an frail 80-year-old who was mugged in the early evening as she walked home from the shops. She was robbed of the ring her late husband gave her, a ring she hadn't taken off her finger since she was given it at age 16. What B*****ds I thought, along with the rest of the newsroom. This sort of crime really angers me as statistically it has been proven that victims of this type of crime, along with distraction burglaries, often fail to recover. The victim in this case says her son now thinks she should move. How awful that her life at the age of 80 should be totally turned upside down because of one piece of scum who has probably sold her precious jewellery for next to nothing for his next drug high.
The truth is that bad news sells newspapers, you only have to look at our website statistics and newspaper sales to see that the most read stories are those about crime and death. It's a sad reality, but that's the truth.
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