William Katz remembers: Stop the presses! Just kidding
10th August 2007
PowerLine. Wisdom about journalists and what they do.
But there have been, especially since the sixties, disturbing trends in journalism. Just as Hollywood, in its hiring practices, has replaced talent with education, journalism is in danger of replacing experience with report cards. Journalism is not a profession. There is no specific body of knowledge required, and there is no licensing. What is needed is a sharp set of skills, high powers of observation, and a humility about how much we can understand quickly, and these come only from experience. But when you’ve gone through Yale or Stanford, when you’ve been told how smart you are, when you got 700s on your SATs, you start to believe what mom has whispered in your ear. You start to think that you “know.” It’s a kind of self-inflicted grade inflation. I’m bright, therefore I’m right.
As somebody who’s gone through Yale and gotten 700s on his SATs, I can vouch for it. In fact, I’m still prepared to argue that I’m smarter than you. I guess I ought to have been a journalist. *sigh* I’m just a victim of bad career choices. Surely there is a government program for such a victim as I….
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