The Media's Ancien Régime

The Weekly Standard ^ | January 30, 2006 | Hugh Hewitt

[RayChuang88]

To enter Columbia University's graduate school of journalism is to enter the highest temple of a religion in decline. A statue of Thomas Jefferson guards the plaza outside the doors, and the entry room is suitably grand. Two raised platforms proclaim the missions in bold gold letters: "To Uphold Standards of Excellence in Journalism" and "To Educate the Next Generation of Journalists." The marble floor tells you that the school was endowed by Joseph Pulitzer and erected in 1912 in memory of his daughter Lucille. A bronze quotation from Pulitzer's 1904 cri de coeur in the North American Review is on the wall:

Our republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve the public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. . . .

[RayChuang88]

(NOTE: I've posted this in Bloggers and Personal since Mr. Hewitt is a noted blogger and runs an excellent weblog site.)

Hewitt has definitely hit it on the nose because this article shows how woefully out of touch the MSM is nowadays, especially at Columbia University's graduate school of journalism. And you wonder why patronage of the MSM has gone down so greatly in the past five years.

[SevenofNine]

Take a example my LA Times newspaper in SO CAL the stocks went downnnnn last week Tribune company stocks they blame the people cancel their subscription to LA Times for woe