Jason Irwin dot Net

Where Are The Journalists?

January 24, 2008 Home

For the longest time, I’ve enjoyed reading newspapers, magazines and various periodicals that are full of well written, thought provoking journalists. Perhaps it’s the love of “the story”. Perhaps it’s something else. But when it comes to telling the news and talking about world events, there are two ways to do it. The thorough and effective way, or the quick and ditry way.

For some reason, everything I’ve read lately has been quick and dirty. So that begs the question: where have all the journalists gone?

On an average day I can easily burn through three or four newspapers cover-to-cover (aside from sports) and absorb the information contained within. While this might provide some of the basic information about world events and the happenings within circles most of us have no access to, it doesn’t actually give us any real value anymore. It seems that no matter what paper I pick up, whether it’s the Daily Yomiuri, the Daily Mainichi, the New York Times or the USA Today (my kingdom for a Canadian newspaper in this country), 10% of all the articles are written by people who’s literary skill matches my own, while another 60% are written by people who might as well be called “n00b bloggers”.

Considering how my writing is hardly worthy of a Pulitzer, it’s a sad statement to make.

Thank God for That 30%

Luckily, there are still a few good journalists out there, but their articles are few and far between. These are the people that specialize in international politics, the follies of the UN (a.k.a. Useless Noise), the history of conflicts with Pacific Nations … the list goes on. But they’re out in the field getting the raw data on a situation and presenting that noise in a clear voice that anyone can appreciate. Sure, the articles are quite long, and the topics rarely leave us with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. But, dammit, why am I reading crap about musicians or actors and their pitifully broken alcoholic homes on page 3 of a non-American international newspaper?

It’s insulting.

Seriously. If I wanted to read about Paris Hilton or some other human that has way too much free time on their hands, I’d hop on the internet and see what’s brewing over at Digg and Reddit (aside from all the Ron Paul stuff and apocalyptic foretelling). What I want to see in a newspaper is just that. News.

Of course, the international news scene is a pretty sad sight right now, but there’s quite a bit of good that’s reported as well. We hear about successful votes taking place in Serbia despite Kosovo’s breakaway status. We hear about changes in the school curriculum to make sure that Japanese students actually get a little bit of a reprieve from their incredibly stressful lives. We even get to hear about some companies that are making progress on environmental protections, if not restorations. But why are so many of these articles seemingly written by junior high school students?

Obfuscating Problems With Extraneous Information = huh?

I understand that newspapers can’t fill their pages with complex lexicons and obscure terminologies, regardless of their relevance, because it would potentially scare readers away. If we can’t understand something, most of us won’t rush out and grab a dictionary to make sense of it. But there should be a set limit as to how low they’ll go before drawing the line. Using a sixth-grade vocabulary to talk about the possibility of India permanent seat on the UN’s Security Council is hardly “professional journalism in action”.

But, like I had said earlier, I can almost forgive the newspapers. The people I can’t forgive are the trade magazines that have either been swapping journalists for children, or outsourcing their content to whatever blogger they might find through some Open Mic program. Time Magazine, Nature and even National Geographic seems to be teeming with dolts that shouldn’t have the opportunity to express themselves to such a large audience. When I read some of these articles I’m left wondering if anyone even proof-reads the stuff, anymore.

Not too long ago I had read an article in the Baltimore Sun about the changes that have taken place in journalism over the last 20 years. With everyone getting their information from the TV, regardless of what kind of information it is, print companies had initially sought the more intelligent crowd. They wanted to have high-quality writers with thought-provoking stories that would make us sit down and question a government decision, or at the very least be able to carry a proper conversation about it. Around the late-90’s this changed, and the most senior of journalists were sent away on early retirement packages while the remaining staff were put on local news projects. Eventually that stopped being “cool” and the newspapers morphed into what they are today.

Bland Oatmeal

Thin collections of words written in no particular order to convey complex and very important details in as few sentences as possible. The words should be written to sound like it was assembled by the common person so that it can be digested without any acid reflux.

It’s a sad state of affairs when many blogs have better journalistic material than a widely distributed international newspaper or magazine. Has TV and internet really killed this medium? Or is this just the publishers’ way of gradually shifting their audience to less-expensive content delivery systems?

What do you think of today’s journalistic quality? Is my assessment of 30% of top-notch writing too harsh?

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