Joys of Journalism
November 26th, 2007The San Francisco Chronicle is running a good article today about the nastiness in the Presidential campaign. It’s a delightful contrarian article, arguing that mudslinging is fine because it shows a candidate’s character and motivation and judgement. I don’t entirely disagree. I just think that he shouldn’t gloss over the media’s perpetuation of nonsense politics and focus a little more on the issues at hand. But would I outlaw “negative campaigning” if I were a sorceror? Probably not.
I would like to see more articles like this and I don’t think it’s too much to ask for. See, Hillary Clinton wants to expand autism research and funding in the government’s budget, so as to discover what causes it, when, how, and find ways to treat autism and prevent it. The increase in autism cases since 1990 is overwhelming and disturbing, and it’s good to read an article about it. You, however, probably haven’t stumbled upon that news before you came here, though, and I only found it by chance. (I was looking for information on another topic and Google news directed me to that AP story.)
I have one last thing to direct you to, Dear Reader, but first let me state that I enjoy working for a College newspaper very much. It is good work and I love it, as well as the people involved. Well, my status as a College journalist gave me a big laugh recently when I was sitting with some friends and one of our reporters came up to us asking for an interview for a story. “I’m your copy editor,” I said to her, “so I don’t think it’d be proper to interview me.” Then I asked if I could join her and I did, chitchatting and helping her build the story. I walked her to work and when I left, I made myself a note to add her on Facebook. I tried but couldn’t find her! So the next day, I was going down an escalator and she was coming up. “Hey,” I said to her, “get a Facebook!”
“I have one.” I said, “I couldn’t find it!” and she said, “Well look harder, you are a reporter!” I loved it. (I did find her. By looking for her place of employment under “occupation”.) It was a really funny little thing. But anyway, I find this story about Dan Rather’s “last big story” to be quite interesting and I think you will, too. The first article I’ve ever had published by anyone other than me was called, A Tyranny of Misperceptions and it was about the role the press plays in modern society, with an emphasis on Bush’s demands upon the CIA at the time.
Fun, isn’t it?