Comments on: Journalism

By: October 15 roundup - Overlawyered

October 15 roundup - Overlawyered — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 19:18:43 +0000

[...] Speaking of which, what is it about Madison County, Illinois, anyway? [Radley Balko, more] [...]

By: Gerald A

Gerald A — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:03:27 +0000

Sadly, the sherriff office is the more professional of the counties law enforcement.

By: Other Sean

Other Sean — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 20:26:12 +0000

Marty,

Put down the David Simon crack-pipe. The newspapers were ten times worse back when they had staff out the ass and a 25% profit margin with effective monopoly control of all major markets.

Now they just cheerlead for the ongoing drug war. Back then, they had the power to CREATE it out of thin air, and they did.

The correct amount of staffing for a rag like the Post-Dispatch would be: zero employees.

By: Steve D

Steve D — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 19:29:40 +0000

It was interesting that not a single comment under the Post Dispatch Story supported Pat Gauen. (and neither does a single comment here)

By: Marty

Marty — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 18:39:03 +0000

the Post has cut their staffing again. I’m thinking they need a good relationship with the cops to make reporting less labor intensive. Joe Pulitzer would be so proud of what his paper has become!

By: Personanongrata

Personanongrata — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 18:21:30 +0000

If the sherrif says this type of profiling doesn’t happen then thats is the end of the story, Pat Gauen has other important “news” articles to transcribe.

By: liberranter

liberranter — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 18:14:04 +0000

Real investigative journalism is a science that requires time, resources, perseverance, and the reasonable assurance that a large enough number of people will pay for and read your work to make it worthwhile to produce. Today’s “newspapers” have none of the above. In other words, “real” investigative journalism is just too expensive and has too small a return on the investment of time, resources, etc. to make it worthwhile for most of today’s “mainstream” publications. This of course doesn’t even take into consideration the institutional incompetence, intellectual immaturity, natural lack of curiosity, and brainwashed compliance of those who call “mainstream ‘journalism’” their profession.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 18:01:11 +0000

‘Journalists’ – hah, more like stenographers to state power.

By: freedomfan

freedomfan — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 17:44:07 +0000

Whether due to deliberate or subconscious statism or some other cause, too many journalist are dependent on government officials for their stories. To them, the best (and easiest) way to legitimize a story is to get some government official to give a quote on it. It doesn’t matter if there is little reason to believe that official has any special knowledge or expertise on the matter at hand. If one has to write a story about a cat running up a tree, then it’s a better story if one can get the mayor to comment on it.

That attitude that the words of politicians and various ranking government employees (“officials”) legitimize a story results in a dependence of the journalist on those people. And, it becomes increasingly difficult to write stories that point out the flaws of those on which one is dependent. In the same vein, why bother doing any actual research on the facts of the story? Once one of these lap-dog reporters has gotten the quotes from officials, the story is done.

By: derfel cadarn

derfel cadarn — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:22:56 +0000

The term journalist is used too loosely in todays world, the terms professional lair or prehaps propogandist would be apropos.

By: Cyto

Cyto — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:04:34 +0000

Where you see poor reporting, St. Louis area politicians see an excellent example of the 4th estate, guaranteeing access and tips for Gauen. Win-Win baby!

That could also be opportunity knocking… It seems the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a need for decent reporting on this story. Hmm… who has a library of easily recycled material that could make an excellent series by a featured guest columnist? Well, if they had any revenue left to spend on buying columns from independents. From what I understand from reading the paper, the people who work at newspapers are doing so for free since the invention of the internet… just for the love of the free press.