I worked at a (somewhat small) newspaper for some years. I can say the following:
1) Journalists think that they are very, very smart.
2) Journalists in general have NO areas of expertise. They do not understand history, literature, music, art, science, engineering, economics, political theory, or anything else.
3) Journalists can type fast and churn out words. This is their only skill.
This. The ignorance of American journalists is staggering.
Well said!
The TV journalists have to have one other skill - look and sound good on TB!
“If they would drop the price down a bit, say to $185k and restrictions such as cats only as pets and no children allowed, I might consider it.”
I like to think the old time journalists at least had some life experience in which to get perspective on their stories. The new ones don’t. Their life experience is journalism school. My favorite is every time we have a hurricane, some 20 year old reporter will discover “ant balls”, where ants will form a ball and float on the water. Everybody knows this, but a young journalist will inevitably report it like they discovered it.
They are very similar to traditional politicians in that sense (although politicians don't often have to type fast). That's why journos & hack politicians get along so well - their lives are based on spewing BS...
;^)
I can attest to the truth of that, I worked at both small newspapers and radio stations with news people for the past 50 years
I worked for several decades at a weekly mag, and I can confirm you’re right on every count. What’s worse, the profession has been growing steadily more feminine. The newsroom used to be populated by no-nonsense, plain-spoken men with no formal “journalism” education. They’ve been replaced by girrrrrls and woke men (at least they pretend to be woke while in the office) with obligatory MAs from “journalism” schools. Same for the editorial staff.
Some years ago, Wolf Blitzer and other “journalists” were on Jeopardy. The got nearly every question wrong.