[jwpjr]

I worked for a major daily newspaper and was appalled at the ignorance of the reporters. Even worse was their refusal to learn anything that would help them write a better article. One of the higher up editors was a pilot and made a big deal about his love of flying and all his time and experience but every article that dealt with aviation had at least one, usually several, glaring errors that should have driven him up the wall.

Much of what ails newsrooms these days is a fixation on PC that results in far more effort being made to be 'diverse' and PC than to write a good article. So many of the outlets are owned by huge conglomerates that the time and energy needed to handle the corporate environment leaves little time for journalism.

[REPANDPROUDOFIT]

IMO, all of this is a reflection of the failure of our schools. Kids are not learning proper English and they are definitely not learning proper writing skills. But I am not proposing bigger and more expensive schools. That is NOT the answer. You can only teach a child that WANTS to learn. The ones who don't care and won't try are dragging the whole system down with them.

[megatherium]

I think it was Mark Twain who said that a reporter could do research in the library and investigate, or he could simply repeat what people told him -- but both approaches pay the same.

[SamAdams76]

There is just not much legwork being done by reporters anymore. If they need to research a subject, they'll just do a Google search from their laptops and cut and paste into the article the same old cliches. What really aggravates me about most daily newspapers is that their news stories ignore the golden rule of journalism (explain the who, what, where and why). Their stories usually lack one of those components and so you rarely get the complete story. They usually eliminate one of these components on purpose so that they can lend some sensationalism to the article. For example, there was a Page One barnburner here in Boston on how inmates in state prisons were being treated to the "circus," clowns and all. The article led the reader to believe that clowns were going around to the prisons and performing for their entertainment.

It turned out that there was a Christian group going around to the prisons to try to convert them to Christianity and clowns were a very minor part of what they were doing. In fact, it appears that actual circus clowns were never involved at all.

But reporters are always looking for something sensational and they try not to let facts get in the way of a good story that might get their article featured on the front page.

I remember my last interaction with a newspaper reporter. We were "Freeping" Bill Clinton here in Boston back around the 1998 timeframe. A reporter was sent out to "cover" our protest. We met him at a downtown bar where he was having a beer. He asked us a few rote questions and to my knowledge, he never came out out of that bar at all to see us in action. The next day, were were mentioned in just a few perfunctory sentences in the article concerning Clinton's visit and we were passed off as a small minority of rabblerousers. Your basic mainstream media hackjob.