Time to Mow the Lawn

It appears that reports of Hillary Clinton’s political death have been exaggerated. Then again, what’s new?

As of 10:40 or so Tuesday night in Chicago, Clinton was leading Barack Obama in the polls in both Texas and Ohio, the two big prizes delegate-wise in today’s four-state primary contest. She and Obama split two appetizer states, with Rhode Island going to Clinton and Vermont to Obama.

It’s remarkable how often the mainstream press has written off the Clintons over the past 16 years. And yet … here they still are. The only example that’s of interest for our purposes is the most recent one, in which most political pundits have spoken of nothing else for the past two weeks other than Obama’s 11 primary wins in a row and how Clinton would have to drop out if she didn’t win Texas and Ohio. Now guess what: It appears Obama’s win streak reached 12 (with the calling of Vermont for him earlier in the night) and stopped there. And Clinton may well have won Texas and Ohio. In fact, the New York Times has called Ohio for Clinton, as of 10:47 p.m.

To hear the papers and the TV news tell it recently, Obama had this thing wrapped up. Now it appears the mainstream media got it wrong again.

Today was not journalism’s finest day in my eyes. I mean, it wasn’t a great day on a number of levels, starting with my experience on public transit this morning, during which I greeted no fewer than five people with a nod and a “Good morning,” only to have it returned with a blank stare and a turn-away or a silent pass-by in each case.

The I read this story in the Times, and figured maybe it was just time to give up on journalism. The worst part isn’t this story about the discovery of the fraud; no, the worst part is reading the book review from Feb. 26 and the fawning, credulous profile of the fraudster author published by the Times on Feb. 28.

In the profile in particular there were so many opportunities for the reporter to fact-check this story, to attempt to verify basic information—such as whether the author graduated from the University of Oregon, as she claimed—and yet in every instance the reporter failed to do so. It was disheartening.

Journalism is pissing itself into irrelevance. I mean, what are we doing? Where are we adding value to people’s lives? I mean, there are journalists doing good work every day; all one has to do is visit www.gangrey.com to see examples of it. But that good work just seems to be overwhelmed by a constant avalanche of stupidity and vanity shitting down on us from all levels of our profession. I get so depressed thinking about it sometimes, about the coiffed ass-clowns plying their trade on local and national TV, and the lazy hacks using up oxygen and ink at local newspapers. I mean, what’s the point of it all? So much of it is so obviously irrelevant, it’s no wonder readers regard the news profession with the same sad pity bordering on outright hostility that they do lawyers, politicians and used-car salesmen.

I always tell people the same story whenever a conversation turns to the pedantic content of local newspapers. This is what happens, I say, when businesspeople try to run news operations. They bring in focus groups, and the focus groups give feedback like, “I don’t have time to read your paper. I start to, but then I have to go mow the lawn.” The business school response is, “We have to make the stories shorter, or add more graphics, because our readers have too much to do. We need to give them only the information they need, and not waste their time.”

I guess when you gear school curriculum around making sure kids can score highly on standardized tests dreamed up by dullards in Iowa (note I did not say Iowa dullards, thus avoiding the implication that all Iowans are dullards), it shouldn’t be a surprise that critical thinking gets left out as a skill that’s taught. The result, quite naturally, is a group of business managers who respond to focus group comments like “I don’t have time to read the paper” with “We have to make the paper fit into people’s short attention spans.”

The more intelligent, and I think useful, question to ask there is, why is someone thinking about mowing the lawn not long after starting to read the paper? Could it be the story is not engaging in any way, or interesting? Could it be the person has already absorbed all of the most basic information in connection with whatever issue the story is covering on the evening news the night before and, finding nothing new—no analysis or context—in the paper, has decided to do something else?

I struggle with this in my own job. Is our little band of journalists providing anything of use to our readers, or are we just regurgitating cold facts that have already been absorbed? Are we writing just to write, or are we informing people?

Is it too late for journalism, or can it be saved somehow? Today I’m depressed, and I see no hope. I see mainstream journalism deteriorating into rumor mongering in an attempt to stay “hip” and “relevant,” or collapsing under the weight of its own bombast and self-importance.

With luck, the sun will come out tomorrow, and my mood will improve, and with it my outlook on my chosen profession.

The Indignant Citizen