When I was a very young reporter in Washington an editor handed me an awful assignment: A high school girl In Northern Virginia had tried to kill herself by setting herself on fire. She was still alive. Barely. One of the other editors at the paper knew the family and believed this could be a story. 

“Give her parents a call, see if they’ll talk to you,” he said, handing me a slip of paper with their names and phone number.

I gulped. 

I went back to my desk and sat there a while. I picked up the phone and put it down. I got a cup of coffee. I took out my notebook. I doodled.

Finally. I took a deep breath and dialed.

Turned out the distraught parents did want to talk. They didn’t want to be quoted directly, but they also didn’t want this to happen to another family. They told me that their 15-year-old daughter had become overwhelmed by the sort of typical teen problems that would one day seem trivial. If she lived, that is.

The family dog had just died and she’d suffered an athletic injury that kept her off a team. The final straw? A failing grade in math. She’d begged the teacher to change her report card, saying her parents were going to kill her.

The teacher refused. She went home and tried to commit suicide in a most gruesome way: She locked herself in a bathroom, doused herself in turpentine and lit a match. She was wearing a nylon track suit.

After interviewing the bereft parents and horrified friends of the girl, I wrote a news story.

Then I called the hospital every day - this was before HIPAA - for updates. 

About a month later, she was gone. An opportunistic infection, they said. 

She was 16. She’d had a birthday while in the burn unit. I wrote another story.

What I remember, beside the graphic details of the incident, was how hard it had been to make that first phone call. To intrude into a family’s profound pain.

That’s when it hit me that this was just the first of many tough interviews I’d have to conduct in my career.

It’s part of the job.

I thought about that long-ago story when I learned about the controversy at the prestigious Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

The award-winning student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern - which is independent from the university - covered a campus protest last week.

A few days later, the staff apologized for triggering a bunch of their classmates. And essentially promised to stop doing real journalism.

According to news reports, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions visited the Evanston, IL campus a week ago as a guest of College Republicans. Predictably, a mob of lefties objected and interrupted his speech several times. There’s nothing the tolerant left likes to do more than try to silence conservative speech.

Student journalists covered the protests, took photos of the protestors and published some on social media. They also used a student directory to try to contact some of the participants for interviews.

Good work. Routine story. Well-covered.

Yet the students were triggered. The protestors wanted to disrupt Sessions’ speech without being photographed. When they were contacted by reporters, the students believed their privacy was being invaded. They were “hurt” and “retraumatized.”

And The Daily Northwestern? It published a groveling apology. 

The graduates of this journalism program - who seem unfamiliar with the First Amendment - will be working at a newspaper near you in the future. You’ve been warned.

Here’s what I’d tell any young person considering a job in newspaper work: This is not a profession for shy or easily intimidated people. Or for folks afraid of getting doors slammed in their faces. 

Good stories often require reporters to put themselves in uncomfortable situations, asking awkward questions that invade the privacy of folks.

Covering protests is easy.

What’s not easy is covering murders, serious crimes, funerals, plane crashes and child abuse. The only way to tell these stories is to talk to people. And to learn how to say “thank you” and politely walk away when they refuse.

Oh, and as far as apologizing for using a student directory? Give me a break. Journalists are compulsive collectors of phone numbers. You’d be surprised what some of us did to get the direct line or cell phone of a prominent person. No, I won’t tell you.

A contact list is a reporter’s most treasured possession.

These student journalists were cowed into silence by bleating bullies in the student body who are acting like victims. They aren’t. They were protestors in public. Fair game.

If these young journalists are OK with rules that protect people from being photographed in public and that prohibit text messages to cell phones, I have two words of advice:

Switch majors.