Back when newspapers were the social media of choice, they had reporters who were assigned a particular area of interest (such as sports or city hall etc) from which they were expected to generate stories, such an area was called a beat. A beat is a certain area or topic for the reporter to work regularly to build familiarity with; the term stems, etymologically, from the 'beaten path'. Of course beat reporters still exist (mostly sportwriters) but in the digital age there are far fewer, just as there are far fewer newspapers for them to work for but back when they weren't "old news" many newspapers had a reporter who worked all night covering the stories that happened when most folks were asleep.
That job was called the night beat.
The world doesn't stop when the day shift ends and people go home and go to bed after the 10 O'clock News or late night talk show monologue.
Nope, there's a whole world at night, and that world is pretty different from the one that exists in the daylight.
I've lived in that world for more than 30 years.
Night owl, insomniac, evening person, nighthawk, vampire...whatever you call us we're out there on the Night Beat. Whether it's the trucker hauling ass and freight on the mostly empty roads, the 3rd shift nurse waiting for the ER to get busy after last call, or the first responder hoping for an uneventful night, they are out doing the job. Some people just stay up late, not to earn a paycheck but because of a myriad of other reasons. Then there are the amateurs, the people who like nightlife but don't live their life at night. They are (often) drunken tourists to the Night Beat; they visit but they don't really understand it. This blog is for anyone and everyone who wants to read it, but it'll probably only make sense to people who regularly get to bed just before sunrise.
As always if you have stories about life at night, send them my way, I'm not sure anyone does long form interviews on blog posts but hey, it's the middle of the night, we have time.
Tota Nocte
~The Night Beat
Night life means something different to the people who live most of their lives at night. While the rest of the world sleeps, interesting things continue to happen. This is a collection of rambling articles on all things night time. This is The Night Beat
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