This article by radio commentator and blogger Hugh Hewitt is a thought-provoking look at my profession. It includes:
1. Something I agree with -- the facts that the "mainstream media" or whatever we want to call that conglomeration is full of leftist bias and that those charged with providing fresh blood (such as the Columbia School of Journalism) don't have a clue and so can't do anything about the problem.
2. Something I doubt -- that the decline in newspaper readership and TV network-news viewership are largely tied to that bias. I think they have as much to do with changes in technology and all the information choices people have today.
3. Something I disagree with now, but want to think about some more -- his provocative conclusion that:
There is too much expertise, all of it almost instantly available now, for the traditional idea of journalism to last much longer. In the past, almost every bit of information was difficult and expensive to acquire and was therefore mediated by journalists whom readers and viewers were usually in no position to second-guess. Authority has drained from journalism for a reason. Too many of its practitioners have been easily exposed as poseurs.
Journalists have always been outmatched by the experts they had to interview and relate to "ordinary" people. Every advance in technology, starting with the printing press, has meant more information available to more of those ordinary people. What we're going through right now is a difference in degree, not in kind, and "journalism as we know it" will continue to evolve, not crash and burn.
