'A Pretend Newspaper Piece'
This evisceration of a poorly reported story in the Baltimore Sun by The Awl‘s Choire Sicha and Tom Scocca is fairly devastating. The future of journalism, broadly speaking, doesn’t always look so bright these days. But at least in the short term, the future of journalism bemoaning journalism’s lack of future looks pretty solid.
How much does this differ from, say, the New York Times’ intensive coverage of the Duke Lacrosse Team rape case in 2006?
— Steve Sailer · Aug 3, 10:58 PM · #
What the world needs is more blog posts about the decline of journalism.
That well just hasn’t been tapped.
— Freddie · Aug 3, 11:05 PM · #
Here’s an even better example. Abbey Brown, a reporter for Alexandria-Pineville Town Talk got the Jena Six story right months before it made the national press: six local high school football stars had been running amok for years, getting away with violence because they were essential to the town football team, and they finally they went too far when the six of them not only knocked unconscious a kid, but continued beating him when he was unconscious on the ground.
Finally, the national bigfeet reporters arrive and … they get the story all bollixed up because they have what Henry Louis Gates would call “narratives in their heads.”
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/01/truth-about-jena.html
— Steve Sailer · Aug 3, 11:06 PM · #
I think Steve’s nickname should be The Hammer.
— Freddie · Aug 3, 11:09 PM · #
Freddie: re: blog posts about journalism, I agree! Though in the meantime, I’m toiling in the more marginal — though still important! — production of blog posts about blogs posts about journalism.
— Peter Suderman · Aug 3, 11:47 PM · #
Journalism used to be a fairly disreputable way to make a living. Now, it provides a shortcut into a moderately high level in the reigning status system without being particularly good at anything. So, it attracts the kind of people who are loathe to shake things up by challenging the reigning “narratives.”
— Steve Sailer · Aug 4, 12:00 AM · #
Steve scores a point.
— PEG · Aug 4, 04:07 AM · #