Journalists should be scruffy pain-in-the-ass bastards. People garbed in wrinkled corduroy or two-day-dirty white shirts. People who have scars and unhealthy habits. People who will stare at a microfilm screen for hours and who will hang out on the wrong side of town. People who don't give a damn for being photogenic. People who don't desire to be a news anchor. People who like digging up dirt regardless of whose dirt it is. People who can use the English language like a stiletto, like a baseball bat, like a velvet glove or like a boxing glove. Who can whisper in the reader's ear like Bacall, and make smartass remarks like Bogart. Who can thunder like John Wayne, sneer like John Malcovich, and knock you up side of the head like Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Someone who doesn't buy this bullshit modernist distinction between "good reporting" and "commentary" because she knows that commentary done without hitting the streets and doing the research and dealing with the shit of actual real world stories, journalistic editorializing isn't worth shit.
Frankly, I don't give a damn anymore whether Helen Thomas or 99.99 percent of the White House press corps is a liberal and ignores "the other side."
To me, the problem is that we have to choose between the Helen Thomases and the Ann Coulters and the Andy Rooneys and the O'Reillys and the Olbermanns of the world.
I miss Ernie Pyle (okay, he was dead before I heard of him, but in my days as a historian, I've read a good deal of his stuff).
I miss Dr. Z.
I miss real reporters.
I miss Mike Royko.
Originally Posted by: Wade