Speaking of writing and style, I've been curious about a decision made recently for one of your posts. Why did you choose to tell us the racial heritage of only one of the three fellows sitting near you at the coffee shop?

From your post:

An older black man sat next to me reading a book about the Buddha. Another guy, about my age with long hair and a goatee, stared at nothing in particular while chain-smoking Camels. A rumpled-looking third fellow, a few years younger than me, quietly read the paper.

She got the award because she knows how to write, not because she's smart or informed (clearly she's not). Journalists know how to write, but it doesn't mean they're smart or informed. I'm willing to bet most (especially the young ones) have a very shallow knowledge base. That's why they should stick to reporting the facts, not giving me their unsolicited opinions.

Speaking of writing and style, I've been curious about a decision made recently for one of your posts.

Because blacks are a minority, and we don't assume the person is a minority unless it's stated. I'm a minority myself and I see nothing wrong with that.

"Want to cover politics? Study Political Science. Want to cover foreign policy? Study Military History. Want to write about globalization? Study Economics."

Not to be facetious, but I want to write on all of these. Guess I'll just study them all then?

Arnie: Why did you choose to tell us the racial heritage of only one of the three fellows sitting near you at the coffee shop?

You could also ask me why I mentioned the hair length of one of them but not the others.

The answer is that I did not intend to write about them while I was sitting there. I hardly ever looked at them - I was reading my book. I wrote down the only details I remembered.

Now it's my turn to ask you a question: Why did you ask me that question? Why didn't you ask me why I mentioned the hair length of one character but not the hair length of the others?

Stephen Cheng: Not to be facetious, but I want to write on all of these. Guess I'll just study them all then?

Yep! I do. But I'm way behind on my economics homework, so I almost never write about it.

This young 20-something political science student lowers his head in contempt. I really can't stand it when the hard-core journalism majors try and tackle politics. It drives me insane at my university, as well. I read their crap and say to myself, "Gee, I know twice as much about politics and can actually write better than the vast majority of them!"

Stupid college journalists. Sigh. I'd be dissapointed to find sentences like those IN A HIGH SCHOOL NEWSPAPER! Big big sigh.

No wonder this piece looked familiar. It was in a Newsweek print edition as well.

Excellent posts today. I have a feeling journalism students like Traci are part of the reason supposed bastions of jounalistic standards like CBS News are in the shaky position they're in today.

Not to shift subjects mid-post, but your earlier article about what you overheard in the local coffe shop really hit home. Why is that the Left has no problem finding examples of "facism" or "a police state" here in the U.S., but apparently can't bring themselves to find it places like Saddam's Iraq.

Along those lines, here's an article from The Nation, where they find something "Orwellian" in Sinclair brodcasting's decision to air an anti-Kerry documentary. Ask yourself the last time anyone at the Nation could bring themselves to describe Saddam's big brother choke hold on his country as "Orwellian".

When I was young and in university I considered myself to be so much smarter than my elders. I thought that my father and Ronald Reagan were among the two stupidest (and dangerous) men on the planet. I'm not sure exactly when it started, but as I grew older, they somehow grew smarter. Now that I am in my 40's it's amazing to me how smart they were all along and just how stupid I was (and perhaps still am).

This guy wants to be V.P.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2108216/slideshow/2108085/entry/2108087/speed/100

Good Lord, that's the best in the country?

Raise the white flags now.

Michael,
Your stuff here is great (I'm a long-time reader). But really, a whole post to beat up on a college student? You voted for Nader last time around, after all. Take it easy, dude, and continue to rip only those who need a ripping. Don't feed the mean dog. I'll be voting for Kerry, but I really like (and agree with, somewhat) your arguments for W. Again, though, great stuff.....

Chopperdave: But really, a whole post to beat up on a college student?

It was mostly intended as a beat-up on j-school. I give the kid a break because I was dense at that age, too.

Michael, read any given column by the dean of Washington correspondents, 72 year old Helen Thomas, and tell me she's dumb.

Link

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/helenthomas/3819300/detail.html

Maybe when you're 72, you'll be as wise and as insightful as she is.

Moonbat,

it's "wise and insightful" to say Liberals are compassionate but George Bush isn't?

I'm not familiar with your posts, so I'm not sure if you were being serious or whether you're just mocking her.

It's quite possible the sophomoric journalism student mentioned here is compassionate too, but that doesn't make her one iota smarter or more qualified.

Ah yes. They attended the Columbia University School of Journalism, so we are supposed to believe them when they tell us that lowering the top federal income tax rate from 39% to 35 % is a "massive tax cut for the rich" ( one of the many off-the-shelf, formulaic slogans they all use repeatedly, so we begin to believe it is true ) , even though they know next to nothing about economics. We could draw similar examples of other Pavlov's dog slogans which are constantly repeated in reporting on defense issues, foreign policy, etc, but why bother. Its old news.

I am no longer shocked by the incredible ignorance displayed by many reporters when I read newspaper stories about the given issue of the day.

If you want a perfect example of the rampant and shameful ignorance of many journalists, just pick up the latest issue of Time or Newsweek.

I watch television news during big, breaking events, such as fires, tornadoes, accidents, or God forbid, a terrorist attack or war. I also watch the debate and talking head shows. Otherwise it is WORTHLESS as a source for meaningful information.

If I want weather information, I log online or watch the Weather Channel. If I want economic news or information, its CNBC.

If I want to understand entitlement reform, unemployment, outsourcing, tax policy, etc, I sure as hell do not turn to Rather, Brokaw, Jennings, Time or Newsweek.

Schools of journalism schools are about as useful to society as schools of education. All that most of these people "know" ( think they know ) is that global warming is a fact, and it is caused by SUVs, that rich people are greedy, and that corporations are evil. And it sure as hell shows in their reporting.

And some people wonder why Fox News is killing CNN, and why conservatives dominate talk radio.

Hello !

Mocking her. She's a fucking moron, and not that much different between the college student despite their difference in years.

I went to the link and read the piece. You were too kind to her, Michael. "I am the Youth Vote". "I want to be (silently holding in a painful sob) respected." Youthful narcissism, self-righteousness and self-pity fairly oozes from the page. Made me want to wash my hands after reading it.

is anyone here but me old enough to remember 'pogo'? back in the 1960 race, when jfk's camp was hard-selling his youth and 'vigah,' walt kelly had porkypine observe, 'being young used to mean you had time to learn something.' i hope this kid uses her time that way.

“Speaking of writing and style, I've been curious about a decision made recently for one of your posts. Why did you choose to tell us the racial heritage of only one of the three fellows sitting near you at the coffee shop?”

I found your question to be weird to say the least. Why shouldn’t our host refer to the racial characteristics of someone? Are you hinting that it’s possibly racist? If so, you need to take a chill pill.

"Um, did she watch the debates?" Check the date on the article.

She's probably not the best journalist student in the country, just the one who wrote what the judges thought a young journalist should write - the authentic voice of youth.

24 year olds believe they are more intelligent than 34 year olds, the 34 year olds believe they are more intelligent than 24 year olds, why are the 34 year olds right? Because they're older? Some people do gain intelligence and wisdom with age. Unfortunately, some don't.

Of course, I'm wrong, because I'm younger than you.

As Essem points out - quite narcissistic. Looks like the contest was sponsored by Newsweek and MTV, who selected what I cannot possibly believe was the best essay submitted but rather the one which best resonates with our stereotype of the self-absorbed 20-something voter (and regular MTV watcher). But then what do we expect of the MSM these days?

Michael, I suggest Marginal Revolutions and the EconoBlog for more Econ. MR had a great post on the Two Things in Economics:
1) There's no such thing as a free lunch
2) Incentives matter.

I'd add a third:
3) Trade is NOT a zero-sum transaction, wealth goes up.

But I'm glad you avoid most econ (you avoid lots of errors). It's not called the dismal science for nothing.

Too bad it's hard enough that most journalists, and politicians, also know so little about it. And of course, MOST gov't policy is about who to get money from, and who to give that (now gov't) money to.

No wonder the profession of Journalism is becoming irrelevant.

If I didn't know better, (and maybe I don't) I'd say the thing was a parody. That first line MJT quoted is just funny.

Consider the sponsers of the essay. For Newsweek and MTV, where superficiality and fecklessness are primary virtues, she's pitch perfect. Some day she may be another Eleanor Clift.

Ahhh, college journalism. Confined to the campus, it can provide for some great entertainment. Michael, I must confess, I get the urge occasionally to check out the Emerald, and I'm still a somewhat devoted reader of The Oregon Commentator.

Hey, Maureen Dowd has an understudy!

I hate to tell you, Michael, but you may actually be on the downhill slide of feeling smarter that other people. I think that peaks at around 25. You'll hold steady for another year or two, then you'll begin to realize that the people who are in your age group (40-50) by then are in charge of most things and we REALLY don't know a damn thing. It is a truly scary realization.

This feeling of being smarter than everyone younger will soon be replaced by the sense that all of these "airheads" as you call them are children of great priviledge and little responsibility. You'll notice it first when you first start calling them "that generation" and remarking about how soft and whiny they are.

What kind of person thinks it is the responsibility of GW or JFKerry to seek them out and get theri attention to tell them why he/she should vote for them? Only to product of that nothing-denied-children-are-our-future-product-of-the-dot-com-soccer-mom generation could think that way.

These are, after all, the same people who actually beleive in great nubmers that Michael Moore is a fair, balanced, documentarian.

It sure is great to be 42.

Let's not be TOO harsh. Clearly the chosen winning essay itself is proof that what they were looking for was an egocentric college-angsty piece that marginally informed college students could identify with, all expressed in a minimum of words. No serious representation of the youth vote (even as a straw monolith)could be done in so few words.

Let's face it, most college journalism majors aren't journalists yet, and won't ever be. College is for most the last bastion of pretense and dilettantism. How many journalism majors are willing to do the grunt research and pavement pounding necessary to be real reporters? Not many. That's drudgery. But there are many that would love to be columnists and essayists with an eager audience for their musings. Think Sarah Jessica Parker on Sex in the City.

The thing that I find troublesome in its entrenchment, and the thing that one hopes post-college growing up cures, is the sense of entitlement. While it's nice to hope that politicians will reach out and take a lot of time to address the issues important to a demographic that votes in very low numbers, that's just not the way it works, is it Traci?

It's easy and compelling to blame politicians for apathy and confusion. But as you mention, there IS no knight on the way. Your choices are to scratch and claw, or sit there and take it. The world is not going to just open to you like a flower. Welcome to adulthood, or chronic victimhood. The choice is yours.

Wait til you're over 50. That's when sucks really begins.

FWIW, I'd just like to add my perspective to this thread.

I was a poli-sci major who, one year after graduation (spent a year traveling after undergrad), joined a fairly large cable news network, as my first real job after college.

95% (if not more) of my colleagues had matriculated from journalism and communications programs.

Most were reasonably intelligent, some were even fairly worldly (to the extent 23 and 24 year-olds can be considered so) and curious. Some were just very pretty, dim bulbs that management thought - well, I don't want to presume exactly what they thought - but I'll generously say that perhaps they just wanted the newsroom to be, er, scenic.

And many just wanted to be on TV and thought that this was their quickest route. All of them knew how to work newsroom equipment better than I did - something that journalism/communications programs can actually teach. Many of those skills can generally be picked up fairly quickly though - although certainly there are degrees of competence, just like in any other field.

By the time I left the network (5 years and a few promotions later, to go back to school), they were only hiring people with Masters degrees in journalism (I don't know if that's still the case, I've been gone now for 5 more years) - for entry level jobs. And with what I saw, the quality and competence had not markedly improved.

But perhaps that has more to do with the ambition level of the entry level employees rising, understandably, due to a higher level of required education, and then coming in, getting very little pay, doing fairly brainless - yet necessary - tasks, and then becoming bitter faster than people who went through the process earlier with only an undergraduate degree.

Michael,

Very good post. My college friend Jim Glanz writes for the New York Times right now and he has never taken a single journalism course. Here's his story. We were classmates together at the University of Iowa (I was raised in the "Field of Dreams" town, Dyersville, Iowa, and he was raised twenty miles away in the "big city" of Dubuque, Iowa, on the Mississippi).

I was an English major; he was a Physics major. We both graduated around 1980. He went on to an MA at Princeton in plasma physics, but the writing bug had got him but good when he was a student at Iowa. After his MA, he started writing, and after papering his walls with rejection slips he started to publish a few articles on science.

Years passed and through lots of hard slogging he started to get noticed as a science reporter. Eventually he landed a gig with the New York Times. He co-wrote with Mr. Lipton also of the Times a very good book on the Twin Towers called City in the Sky, a book that most certainly shines because of his Physics background and all of the connections he had made with scientists and engineers over the years.

A few months ago the NYTimes sent him to Iraq and you can find his byline on reports about reconstruction there. NOT ONE JOURNALISM COURSE. Just a smart, hard-working kid from Dubuque -- and not a little ambition, of course.

Hey, Maureen Dowd has an understudy!

Feh. This kid will need a lot of work to be as awful as Maureen Dowd.

Has anyone else noticed that Newsweek is leaning slightly to the left of the Nation lately?

As the mom of a college student, I have to say that Traci’s opinions aren’t shared by the kids that I’ve talked to. One of my son’s friends joined the Army, two years ago, and he’s now a Ranger. Another friend is a musician, and he works round the clock to study and earn money doing the work he loves. None of them expect a free lunch, most don’t party and slack as much as I did (my son is studying aerospace eng., and engineers just don’t have that kind of time).

None are journalism majors, but most of them get their news from Jon Stewart and the internet. Then again, so do I. Some support Kerry, some support Bush, but they also know that Michael Moore and Jeaneane Garafalo are unfunny hypocrites. And none became Deaniacs. To a lot of kids, growing up with left-leaning parents, lefty values are old establishment values.

I think Newsweek’s lefties picked Traci’s essay because they sympathize with her whiny cynicism. I wonder how many essays written by informed centrist kids wound up in Newsweek’s trash bin.

Essay contests always celebrate the idealists. Or the competitors that reflect the interests of the judges.

Michael, I agree with your sentiment that journalism curriculums should mandate a lot more study of history. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how effective that might actually be right now since if college texts are written by the same folks who do the duty for my seventh and ninth graders the budding journos will be getting the "....for Dummies" version.

I'd like to see J-school curriculums that put their students in crime beat internships in large/giant metropolitan areas, myself.

I've been reading a lot on how to write articles since I left the outdoor workworld. (Waits for laughter so subside). The books written prior to 1980 have entire chapters devoted to the requirement of research and the necessity for understanding at least the rudiments of a subject you intend to write about. After 1980 the accent shifts to source credibility. By 1990, actually understanding the subject is deemphasized to the level that the writer is warned not to sound overtly uninformed...

It's hard to explain, and I am afraid I can't do the subject proper justice with my meagre skills.

What we have ended up with is a body of journalists who overwhelmingly concentrate on style and political conformity more than substance. It seems to me that any intent toward informing the reader has been abandoned wholesale for the drive to influence the audience. There's a damned thin line between news and editorial content in most media organizations, if the line exists at all, and that's a fact.

However. If you want to write about something, you first have to know something about it.

Doesn't stop bloggers, does it now? I have a two-bit opinion about everything that I'll be happy to write about, whether I know anything about it or not.

** Guys, and you know who you are, the above straight line is my early Christmas present to you. Fire away. **

I am confused and frustrated.

That tells the whole story. The problem isn't lack of data, but lack of philosophical skill. She doesn't appreciate the difference between Bush and Kerry, despite all the data out there, because she doesn't have the thinking skills to see for herself the principles animating their (wobbly) stances.

Yeah it was lame. But before we shred her like an Iran-Contra document or Whitewater Memo, let's remember that if the winning ticket tried to study the issues and come off as an uberwonk, it would probably have been the paper that got shredded (this time by the judges), especially if it had come down favorably on, say... Bush. By being wishywashy and downright [that whining sound you make when you are going comme-ci-comme-ca with the hands] she split the middle and won. Thus it's hard to tell if she won on strategy or through genuine Gen-X mediocrity.

...and he was raised twenty miles away in the "big city" of Dubuque, Iowa...

Dubuque isn't big. Now Waterloo, THAT's big. heh.

This is what comes of abandoning the old "who-what-where-when" form of journalistic writing for the narrative form that's in fashion now. Eventually the facts don't matter at all.

Michael, I had never heard of you until a week ago, but in the past week you have picked up a major fan. All I can say is "Amen."

I agree with your assessment of a journalism education. In fact, I wrote a couple of things on this topic here and here. I'm an engineer, and my degree required far more breadth than any journalism degree I found. I think all journalism degrees should be minors rather than majors. At least then the graduate would have a background in something.

I want to be educated,
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then do it the resources are at your hands
My great aunt Ruby left school in the 3rd grade, but she learned how to READ which she continued to do for the next 80 years. She could hold her own with any college professor on philosophy and there were some very edcuated people in our town who had great respect for her "education"
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listened to and,
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Why?
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most of all, respected.
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Earn it. That is a concept that is in disfavour lately

Michael- the writer at Mayflower Hill (www.mayflowerhill.blogspot.com) is calling you out on your latest Tech Central piece, "The Liberal Case for Bush." He says that you've sold out your own principles by voting for him. The argument he makes is actually pretty well reasoned.

Are you going to respond?

The specific link is http://mayflowerhill.blogspot.com/2004/10/problem-with-tottens-liberal-case-for.html

Yeah... Pat is right. I read that piece at www.mayflowerhill.blogspot.com yesterday.

The guy makes some really good points, Michael.

You should respond, or at least acknowledge him on your website.

He says that you've sold out your own principles by voting for him.

Maybe he's just CHANGED his principles. It happens. Nothing wrong with that.

Re this airhead, based on her flakiness, my money's on her voting Democrat this election.

"A freshman in History would laugh at the first sentence I quoted."

Or anyone raised Christian who actnally listened in church (or listened to the lyrics on Jesus Christ Superstar.) It's hard to believe that she has never inn her entire life heard "The poor will always be with us."

Michael - do you happen to have the names of the contest judges?

As alleged professionals they deserve even more mockery for having chosen that essay than the airhead deserves for having written it.

This can't be explained by mere ignorance of history. It results from deliberate cultivation of a warped view of human nature and human society. J-school intentionally disables the faculties of critical thought.

This specimen got the prize for conformance, not for talent or technical skill. She's the "best".