Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Progressive Reporting: The Inside Scoop

A Progressive "media outlet"/blog/yackety-schmackity, words on Teh Innernet/whaddevvah down Atlanta way (the one in GA) recently let a reporter go. Well, tough breaks, kid; it's a cut-throat biz.

But why'd they fire him? That's the interesting part:
...because he held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy....
Yep. That's what Mr. Charlie Editor-man said: his editorial policy features disbelief in objective reality. And aims to share it.

Guy like that, you'd like to take mountain-climbing, let him get a finger-breadth of "objective reality" under one boot an' then ask him if he'd rather have that dull ol' reality or the sincere progressive belief he was standing on a nice, wide scaffold to hold him up.

Huge tip of the hat to The Unwanted Blog, which you should go read. And maybe buy something from.

Update: same editor quoted above, in comments after his bona fides as an Authorized Journalist are questioned: "As far as my education, I have two masters degrees, one in sociology and one in public administration. I would argue these degrees have allowed me to see the interconnection between social policy and people’s lives, and to have a comprehensive social and political theoretical perspective..." [My emphasis.] So, it's the degrees, hey, and not the education that earned 'em? In. ter. est. ing. Not. Oh, and -- insecure much?

5 comments:

og said...

No insecurity. The overwhelming evidence (in his own mind) that his idea is superior. See Eric Hoffer's "Fact Proof Screen". He's clearly smarter, because he has his sheepskins. SO people without sheepskins, no matter how their ideas resonate and make sense, cannot possibly know what they are talking about.

Vonnegut, god bless his black pacifist soul, said it best:

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."

perlhaqr said...

I can see how that pair of degrees could conjure that sort of attitude.

Stranger said...

I do not believe my fathers friend and Emporia Gazette editor Bill White would agree with this "master" of sociology and business administration.

It is precisely this attitude among the mindless "journalists" in the mung-stream media that makes me, along with millions of Americans, question the value of my monthly newspaper subscriptions.

Stranger

Anonymous said...

Sounds like an ivory-tower intellectual without the imagination to see past the end of his own nose.

Speaking of his nose, if he held it any higher he would likely risk drowning in the shower.

Jim

Midwest Chick said...

I've got an MPA and I'm as confused as heck about the interconnection of social policy and people's lives. Maybe I'm missing the second degree that would allow it to all come clear. Or not. I'll stay comfy in my blissful ignorance.