That's a paradox I've noticed, too: The news business held little romance for me, yet writing about it somehow stirred my affections.

When I left Toronto and entered journalism in the late 1990s, I had many notions about the news business, nearly all of them wrong, as it turned out.

Obituaries were among my favorite to write because they have elements no other news stories have - a story from start to finish with a proper conclusion.

Journalists who are devoted to strictly factual reporting take particular pleasure from satirical news outlets that have the liberty to laugh and even mock the hypocrisy that reporters and editors must simply observe without comment.

During my past career as a journalist, I relished writing obits and equally dreaded phoning relatives for the necessary facts. But to my surprise and great relief, they often wanted to talk - they wanted their recently deceased loved ones recorded in print.

I hadn't been a particularly precocious reader, but everybody else in my family was.