In a stunning revelation [hashtag: Breaking! hashtag: ICYMI], Sean Hannity is drawing attention to the difference between news and talk shows on the radio.

The twitterer who was cited in that link had to explain that Hannity is not a journalist; he’s a host. That’s something those of us who’ve worked in AM radio have dealt with our entire careers and those lines continue to get blurrier as companies cut funding for news. News makers are then forced more often onto talk shows where they’ll be asked opinionated or leading questions.

But this Sean Hannity situation brought back a memory of my own news/talk days. My first “big city” job was in Portland, Oregon. I started on overnights there. When I went to work reporting on the day shift, I remember one of our anchors teasing his top story, artfully declaring something that was both factually accurate and also the exact opposite of something Hannity had just said.

What the program director of that station in Buffalo might be getting at is the host will tell you what you want to hear. The news guy will tell you what you need to hear. You may not care for it, but you’ll get a balanced story.

That same company I worked for in Portland would ultimately cut news. It’s now gone bankrupt twice. The last company I worked for went bankrupt, too. I’m sure that’s not a trend, though, gang.

Personally, I’m mainly apolitical. I’m not a liberal journalist, nor am I a rightwing talk radio denizen. I feel like I wrote a blog about this once, but I can’t find it. When I was at WBAP, I would tune in at the top of the hour when I was driving the news car then go back to a CD when the news was over.

At a red light when it was open window weather once, someone pulled up next to me, heard a CD and started yukking it up as she yelled at me about how I should be listening to the station painted on the outside of the car.

I feel like that was an adorable blog. That’s my political pledge to you, gang: make it easier to search these blogs for importantinformation about what people are hollering at me at red lights.

One of the things that would bring in a balanced audience, especially in a city like Portland [where it’s possible the audience skews slightly more to the left than in Texas], is knowing that you can flip over for a few minutes, find out what happened that day and maybe get a traffic report.

While I holler about radio newsrooms making cuts, television news is changing as well.

I see one of the stations in DFW finally had the guts to run a story about how adorable doggies are when they frolic in fields of bluebonnets.

That may sound like I’m poking fun, but ​I didn’t realize until I moved here that people really look forward to taking pictures of their dogs in the bluebonnets every Spring.

But enough about how doggies are adorable. Back to Sean Hannity.

I was filling in for an anchor at one of my stations one afternoon when Hannity took a call leading up to the news. The caller expressed dismay that Hannity was talking about having lunch with a Congressman who’s a Democrat.

How could he?!

Hannity had to break character and explain to the caller that even though they may disagree politically, Republicans and Democrats can still be friends. They spend all their time together in Washington, so they hang out together. Hannity went on to explain there’s no reason to get angry about politics because he’s just doing a show.

Maybe we can learn from this situation: Regardless of your political party, we can all agree that doggies are adorable. We can also agree that I’m hip and “with it” because I just linked to “Blurred Lines.”

Never mind that until I googled it, I thought it was, like, a Katy Perry song or something. That doesn’t matter.

But now that I’m seeing Hannity and the president have used the same lawyer, I feel like I should lawyer up. Maybe I’m not as a big a deal as Hannity, but doggone it, guys, I’ve won awards! I’m sure you can never have too many lawyers on staff… filing briefs and whatnot. I’m not entirely sure what a “brief” is and I, in fact, prefer boxers. But I would also like to start telling people I’d have to refer their questions to my legal counsel.

I feel like that would cut through small talk.