I'm finally, gradually, catching up on all the Daily Show and Colbert Report trapped in my DVR, when I can wrestle a half-hour or so from writing. I'm glad I didn't just delete without watching, because Sir Harold Evans asked a damned good question on the Colbert Report while discussing the need for editors: "Well, it's simply like Rush Limbaugh is telling you about global warming. Don't you want somebody to print the truth alongside all the bullshit?"
I'd love nothing better!
If only we had an editor like him at the helm of every paper today, we'd probably not be measuring the newspaper industry for a coffin. We'd certainly have less unchallenged bullshit floating about.
1 comment:
Unfortunately, the people who own newspapers decided a couple of decades ago that it was better to make a lot of money for a short time (while they were in charge, of course), instead of making modest amounts of money for a long time. We are now at the end phase of that process.
Editors, researchers, and reporters were all needless expenses in that process. What's sad is that I really haven't seen them replaced in the journalism business. Blogs can do fact checking (rather like researchers, but after the fact), and to some extent we do the reporting. But there's hardly anyplace you can go online anymore where there are articles written, submitted for review, and then published in a rigorous way analogous to the way the best newspapers used to do it.
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