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Insights from Quadrant
Journalism as she
is taught
is taught
It has been all of 30 years ago since Columbia Journalism School hosted Michael Lewis (above), author of Liar’s Poker, The Big Short and Moneyball, a great read even if you know nothing of baseball and care less. Lewis left less than impressed, not least by, well, let him tell it:
The first sentence on the bronze plaque that you see when you walk through the front door of the Columbia Journalism School may or may not be true, but it sets a fittingly autocratic, unreflective tone. The second sentence is ungrammatical. The last two sentences offer the sort of grandiose vision of journalism entertained mainly by retired journalists or those assigned to deliver speeches before handing out journalism awards. Highly flattering to all of us, of course, but it would be more true to flip the statement to read: “a cynical, mercenary, demagogic people will produce in time a press as base as itself”
Columbia, where tuition runs to around $80,000 a year, is right now the sandbox for petulant, post-adolescent bourgeois children demonstrating their virtue by sleeping in tents, jostling Jews and, just today, occupying the same Hamilton Building where their grandfathers holed up in 1968 to end the Vietnam War. Perhaps, in order to believe Israel now or General Westmoreland then might pay any heed requires a mentality that sees paying $80k to be lectured at length about the verb “to be” as good value.
Decades old as it is, Lewis’ report is timeless and telling, not least in relating the inability of students and their professors to recognise a hot story unfolding in their very midst. It also explains why the students of three decades ago, today’s editors and news-tasters, are as bad at their jobs as every news cycle demonstrates.
The report, a fine piece of writing and reporting, can be read in full here.
— rf
Insights from Quadrant
MayQuadrant
now on sale
now on sale
Insights from Quadrant
Journalism as she
is taught
is taught
It has been all of 30 years ago since Columbia Journalism School hosted Michael Lewis (above), author of Liar’s Poker, The Big Short and Moneyball, a great read even if you know nothing of baseball and care less. Lewis left less than impressed, not least by, well, let him tell it:
The first sentence on the bronze plaque that you see when you walk through the front door of the Columbia Journalism School may or may not be true, but it sets a fittingly autocratic, unreflective tone. The second sentence is ungrammatical. The last two sentences offer the sort of grandiose vision of journalism entertained mainly by retired journalists or those assigned to deliver speeches before handing out journalism awards. Highly flattering to all of us, of course, but it would be more true to flip the statement to read: “a cynical, mercenary, demagogic people will produce in time a press as base as itself”
Columbia, where tuition runs to around $80,000 a year, is right now the sandbox for petulant, post-adolescent bourgeois children demonstrating their virtue by sleeping in tents, jostling Jews and, just today, occupying the same Hamilton Building where their grandfathers holed up in 1968 to end the Vietnam War. Perhaps, in order to believe Israel now or General Westmoreland then might pay any heed requires a mentality that sees paying $80k to be lectured at length about the verb “to be” as good value.
Decades old as it is, Lewis’ report is timeless and telling, not least in relating the inability of students and their professors to recognise a hot story unfolding in their very midst. It also explains why the students of three decades ago, today’s editors and news-tasters, are as bad at their jobs as every news cycle demonstrates.
The report, a fine piece of writing and reporting, can be read in full here.
— rf
Insights from Quadrant
MayQuadrant
now on sale
now on sale
