3 min read
The Cigarette and the Journalist: Why the Newsroom Still Smokes
Journalism has historically been a high-smoking profession—the deadlines, the stress, the culture of the newsroom. The newsroom has changed. The smoking hasn't entirely disappeared.
The old newsroom was a haze of cigarette smoke—reporters typing with one hand, smoking with the other. The smoke is gone now—workplace bans, health consciousness, the decline of the newspaper industry. **But the association between journalism and smoking persists—in the mythology of the hard-drinking, chain-smoking reporter, and in the reality of a profession that remains stressful, deadline-driven, and, for many, a calling that demands coping mechanisms.**
