When I tell people I’m a writer at “Dateline NBC,” I get a variety of reactions. Often I hear, “Cool! What’s Lester Holt really like?” Or “Do you think that husband really disconnected his wife’s oxygen tank while they were scuba diving on their honeymoon or was it just a bizarre accident?”

However, sometimes I detect a look of mild horror, the kind I imagine trauma surgeons and cops get. It’s a look that says, Wow, you spend every day immersed in all that darkness. Isn’t it depressing?

Actually ... no.

When I first started at “Dateline,” the show followed a different format. We covered consumer issues, did investigations and profiles (one was of a young and sunny Taylor Swift, no less), and offered plenty of human interest stories. But times change and so does the audience. True crime

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