The Lowercase Caste

There I was, sitting in Newswriting 101 class back in 1983 or so, long before they even did any of this on computers. The teacher—a brilliant female Phil Donahue lookalike whose insistence on journalistic accuracy bordered on the sadomasochistic—gave the students a cold set of facts and commanded us to write a news story about it. As she went around the room asking the students one by one to read their stories aloud, she stopped one aspiring journalist dead in his tracks before he could even finish his first sentence. He’d started off with:

“Tragedy struck the plush suburb of Chestnut Hill last night as—“

And that’s where she cut him off harshly. She told him that whether or not it was a tragedy is a matter of opinion, not of fact. And calling Chestnut Hill “plush” was also a bit of editorializing that had nothing to do with the fact that someone was murdered there last night.

The Collected Works of... G. K. Chesterton Best Price: $8.22 Buy New $15.79 (as of 03:27 UTC - Details) This was the same teacher who, after I graduated and sent her a letter requesting a recommendation letter from her, marked all my letter’s typos in red, sent it back to me, and told me she’d write a recommendation letter once I sent her an error-free request.

They don’t make ‘em like that anymore. And man, do I wish they did.

She was the one who taught me very clearly to never say what someone thinks, only what they say, because they could be lying about what they actually think. Journalists nowadays all act as if they can read minds.

She also taught us the difference between a fact and an opinion, and unless you were writing what was clearly an opinion piece rather than a news story, you were never to share your own opinions or biases.

And not only don’t you share opinions, the only way to keep yourself from looking like an idiot is to never state anything as a fact, either. Nothing. You attribute all statements of either facts or opinions to others. You never make any claims. You always attribute claims to others. That way you’re never wrong.

You are perfectly free to QUOTE someone saying the most ridiculously emotional, subjective, unquantifiable, and unfalsifiable thing. Go ahead and let someone say that there is racial injustice in the USA. Hang that stupid sentiment on them. 2015 Niuu00e9 Proof - ... Check Amazon for Pricing.

The reason she taught us to do it this way is because journalism, at least as she saw it, was an attempt to get at the truth no matter how unpleasant the truth might be. The LAST thing journalism was supposed to do was push an ideology, because at that point it ceased to be journalism.

She spot-welded the idea into my skull that journalism should be approached not as a means to “stick it to the powerful”—because at that point, it’s not reporting, it’s advocacy—but as a science. Report on the powerful, report on the poor, report on everyone in between—but only report on what you can see and prove.

Maybe I was missing something all along, but back then the Associated Press seemed to see journalism the same way as my grey-haired butch journalism teacher did.

No more.

Read the Whole Article

From Dawn to Decadence... Barzun, Jacques Best Price: $1.68 Buy New $12.75 (as of 05:45 UTC - Details) FR (1163-1201) AD Medi... Check Amazon for Pricing. Nazareth Store Catholi... Buy New $4.90 (as of 03:27 UTC - Details) LUHE Small Cross Neckl... Buy New $20.99 (as of 03:31 UTC - Details)