badges

I was at a press event this morning. All of the official greeters had badges. The public relations people had badges. The designers and fabricators — of the new product being rolled out — had badges. Even the celebrity guests had badges.

You know who didn’t have badges? The members of the press.

Standing around at this event, watching the demonstration and then talking with folks afterwards, I kept thinking of that episode of “The Brady Bunch” where Peter decides to become a reporter, starts calling himself “Scoop” Brady, and sits behind his typewriter with a card reading “PRESS” stuck in the brim of his hat.

Sure, I wasn’t the only member of the press who wasn’t armed with visible credentials. Like I said, you could easily look around the room and identify who was with the media, because we were the only ones there without badges. But I started wondering about making up my own photo ID to be laminated and suspended on the end of a lanyard.

It could say whatever I wanted it to, within reason. I doubt I’d make up something that said, “Jennifer Willis, Pulitzer Prize Winner” or some similar fantasy. But a simple, “Jennifer Willis, Freelance Journalist” — along with a list of my professional memberships and featuring a recent photo — might at least help me feel more official, and might even open some doors for me. (Figurative doors, of course. Even if I put a fake magnetic stripe on the back of my self-created ID badge, I doubt it would get me through even the simplest security system.)

On a more serious note, I remember hearing from my fellow interfaith ministers who were on the scene in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York City. Those who had ID cards identifying them as ministers — even when they had created these cards themselves — were allowed unfettered access to Ground Zero in order to minister to the rescue workers and to the wounded and dying.

If another such tragedy or other momentous event were to arise…. It might not be a bad idea to look into freelance press credentials — to find out if any of the professional organizations I belong to offer such a thing, and/or to consider creating my own.

(And I got all the way to the bottom of this entry without once quoting, “We don’t need no stinking badges!”)