That’s Steven Hayward’s title for today’s post on the (continuing) decline in journalism. It was prompted by a lament in the New York Review of Books by Dean Nicholas Lemann of Columbia, asking Can Journalism Be Saved? Hayward excerpts some of the key points, including Lemann’s rather clueless exposition on the trend towards opinions in […]
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If food has a sell-by date, perhaps news, as opposed to history, has a tell-by date. I am just getting around to this topic, reflecting on a story that was very much under the radar this past month, after initially being served up with lots of sizzle before Thanksgiving. Yes, this would be Chick-fil-A versus the Salvation Army.
How hard is this reporting stuff? Is it too much to ask people who are paid to publish to get basic reporting right? Could they perhaps take a moment to think through the logic of documents, on their face, before and after drafting a news or analysis piece? Not that I have any strong opinions on the subject, but pardon me while I rant a bit about a Federalist article … and poor Senate Republican staff work.
Jim Lehrer died Thursday, peacefully in his sleep at 85. He got his three-score years and ten with change back, a life lived in full. Lehrer was best known as half of PBS’s “MacNeil-Lehrer Report.” It debuted in 1975 and was an example of balanced reporting through at least the mid-1990s (when I drifted away from watching it).