Fallback career: Cook crystal
Everybody in the newspaper business is looking for new careers, so here’s one: Cooking crystal meth.
If you haven’t already, you should seriously check out the TV show Breaking Bad, with its tale of an Albuquerque high-school chemistry teacher, Walter White, who turns to manufacturing crystal meth to earn more than his crappy $43k salary because he has terminal lung cancer, a teenage son with cerebral palsy, a wife who is eight months pregnant with a baby girl and the same shitty health insurance the rest of us have. It’s the hippest thing on TV. Episode 7 begins with an original narcocorrido singing the praises of the mysterious white dude who cooks blue crystal.
Anyhoo, your average newspaper worker might not want to leap from slinging news to slinging meth, but, with any business plan, one must weigh the risks against the rewards. Crime pays, with great risks. Doing PR for some dull corporation is safe, but if you wind up with a lung cancer diagnosis, who knows what you might feel pressed to do?
Economic hardship…it’s the plot driver behind many stories.
