Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Journalism 1







Why are there Journalism schools?  Srsly.  I'm of the opinion that the best schooling a cub reporter wannabe can get  is old school.   Hired as a copy boy.  Treated brutally by no nonsense city editor.  Gets chance to write obituaries; advances to police beat. Breaks story on mayor and chief of police white slavery ring. Wins Pulitzer Prize.  Hired by even bigger city paper.   Right?

I took a  journalism class in college.  I wanted to try it because it was the only major without a math requirement.  I didn't know it at the time, but I learned everything a journalism school can actually impart
—   on the first day.  The Five Ws.   
Res Ipsa Loquitur
  • Who is it about?
  • What happened?
  • When did it take place?
  • Where did it take place?
  • Why did it happen?
In that order.  "Accuracy" didn't start with "W," but it was understood to be critical.  Once.  You cannot learn more without going on a beat. 

So, why journalism degrees?  Partly, I think, a conceit by newspapermen to present themselves as "professionals."  In practical terms, what's happened is journo schools, of which Columbia is a flagship,  have become the gatekeepers of who gets hired in the industry.  If you're the editor of the (usually off-campus) conservative paper, you don't get in.  Since all journo schools are staffed and run by, for all practical purposes, the American Communist Party, that discipline becomes ingrained.   After Theodore White wrote "Making of a President 1960," The Five W's were replaced by a liberal-lie stir-fry; your waiter's job— to instruct, "here's what it all means you stupid clot." And we are.  

7 comments:

DougM said...

Who the heck do you think you are?
What is truth, anyway?
When did you stop beating your wife?
Where do you get off saying that?
Why don't you just believe me?

Jess said...

I think the progressive media has adopted W.T.F. can we make up today. If not, I have no idea why they're so irresponsible.

TimO said...

Except you can't get hired as a copy boy.
You have to work for a couple of years as an 'unpaid intern'.
(you know, slave labor)

So you have to go to an ultra-liberal school, take ultra-liberal journalism classes and be interviewed by an ultra-liberal editor/manager and then be prepared to have Dad front your living expenses for at least 2 years until you can get an actual paying job. The are CLONED.

...is it any wonder that 95% of the staffs are ultra-liberal???

//been there, done that. Tried to get into the biz 20years ago after a couple of years doing news radio. When I saw the game, I switched careers and went into computers.

Anonymous said...

Starting with Cronkite *spit* and fueled by Woodward and Bernstein, journalism took a dive and advocacy rose in its place. But truth finds a way. And it pisses off all the right people!
Tim

Anonymous said...

Bork wrote The Tempting of America over twenty years ago. In the first pages he explains that politicizing institutions destroys their founding purpose. Journo, Ed, Black Studies, and Wymen's studies are all symptoms of the underlying disease in higher education. AGW is the extreme example where even science becomes perverted.

We're either going to have to use a backhoe to bury these folks, or swear that the earth is flat at some point.

Casca

Steve in Greensboro said...

J School is for people too stupid and lazy to get into Ed School (and that is a pretty low bar).

Ole Phat Stu said...

Nursery Rhyme from my childhood 60+ years ago :-

I keep six honest serving men,
They taught me all I knew,
Their names are What,
And Why and When,
And Where and How and Who.

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