For a 30-year newsroom veteran, do you really believe that all journalist do is show up at press conferences and ask a few impertinent questions? You write as if anyone can be a political cartoonist, investigative reporter, war correspondent, combat photographer, influential movie critic, syndicated columnist, successful humorist, graphic artist, even beat reporter. Anyone can write book-length investigations on any topic under the sun. Journalism is a deceptively simple term but it’s a category that includes dozens of jobs, most of which you couldn’t perform, despite your 30 years in the business.

Sure, the work many reporters do is probably not beyond the ken of an intelligent person, but it requires years of experience to develop proficiency, spot trends and write with authority — not four months. If it were just four months, a gaggle of summer interns could run the damn paper, son.

Your jab at newsroom ethics is out of left field. Journalists are constrained by some of the most stringent ethics rules in whitecollardom. They can’t contribute to a political candidate, can’t speak at a city council meeting, can’t accept lunches or trips — they can’t do many things most employees take for granted. Your old pals at McClatchy aren’t even allowed to write personal blogs, like your own oracle: www.gearino.com.

Your faith in the power of bloggers is naively charming. Let’s say the N&O shuts down for financial insolvency and some blogger decides to take on the Easley administration. Your blogging hero, not backed up by First Amendment lawyers, calls the mayor’s flack and says: Send me all your e-mails from your last meeting on subject X. Okay, the blogger fails to get his e-mails, but as the mayor’s people are still laughing over this joker, the blogger has decided to devote 50 hours a week of his time to cover this beat. He’ll assign graphics, put in research requests, dispatch photographers, develop a Rolodex of sources and prepare a list of enterprise story ideas. Wait, there’s a hurricane coming. Our blogger has to drop what he’s doing and activate the natural disaster coverage plan. Of course he’s prepared one — he’s a blogger after all, one of the best in the business. Now, we need to rent 4WD vehicles, buy extra insurance … anyway, you get the picture. Your bloggers just aren’t up to the task. They never will be.

Whew!

Enjoyed the article in Business NC.

Nice pic above the byline too. Hubba, hubba. Talk about
rakish good looks and a come-hither expression. You got it in spades pal. If you’re currently unincumbered by female companionship, you oughtta renew your subscription to eHarmony and forward that image on to ‘em quick, fast and in a hurry. I predict potential life-mates will be beating a path to your inbox before you can sing Viva Viagra.

So far there hasn’t been any crime, but a lot of, in G.D.’s nice words, “rank speculation” and “braying moralists.” I can empathize with you for wanting to go after the hypocrite.

Anyway, thanks for the nice words, G.D.!

“Despite claims such as this one, the media’s performance in this instance isn’t a case of a compliant press coddling a liberal politician. There are obvious reasons for the media’s reluctance to dive into this story, not the least of them being that the sins of the flesh are universal and minor. This story really isn’t that big a deal. C’mon. Do you really think the media’s highest and best function is to be a braying mob of moralists?” — G.D. Gearino, August 1, 2008

1. I read your Business NC piece and tried to leave a comment, but I don’t think it went through due to some entry error, so here are my two cents on that:

Well said, G.D. One thing to add: as the newspapers that land on our doorstep get thinner–with less local news–and the advertising gets more obnoxious (stickers over headlining copy!), we’re alienating more and more readers; not the die-hards like us who will always prefer to read the paper on the back deck, flipping pages rather than having a steaming laptop on our legs, but we’re losing the old-timers who still buy the paper out of habit. If the current readers feel that the N&O isn’t worth the ~$150 price tag per year and they’d rather just get their news from the TV (gah!), there’s not a next generation who are going to be picking up their slack. I’m not sure what else I can do to help promote newspapers other than show my children what a big part of our lives they are, just like my parents did for me. I hope newspapers survive this blip and still exist for my own children when they’re adults.

2. The Where the Hell is Matt? video gives me goosebumps. I watch that video several times a week (in fact, the order of my bookmarks is … Where the Hell is Matt? … G.D. Gearino … etc.) and it makes me both happy and sad. Happy because I love the story — just some guy who decided to see the world rather than work in a cubicle; then he gets sponsored to do it again, not once, but twice (http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/about.shtml). Sad because I’m itching to see more of the world, but it will be many years before I can venture very far (with two small children and two full-time jobs, we’re not exactly in the place where we can go very far right now, but that time will come when we’re older…). If you have some time to kill or you’re doing mindless work that allows you to listen, I recommend the lecture at the link I pasted above. It’s really fun to hear Matt describe his adventures, and it gives me an appreciation for how thankful he is for his experience.