Freedom of press.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(02-21-2017, 02:01 PM)Benton Wrote: Unfortunately, this has been the trend over the last 10-15 years. And to point fingers, it's mostly J schools and their lack of preparing students for the job.

That makes sense and would fall in with the trend I'm noticing about higher education in general.  Point being, I don't think it's just journalism schools doing a poor job.

Quote:I'm rapidly getting to the age where I'm old enough to know things, but young enough not to be outdated (yet). So I work with younger journalists when I can. And it amazes me how little most of them learned about writing, the actual mechanics of language and word usage. They're good at grammar, but don't understand the weight of the words they chose. Or don't care. In that same line of thinking, I'm also surprised how few know about not putting themselves into the situation. The majority of focus seems to be avoiding plagiarism, sticking to AP, and trying to get people to approach things 'out-of-the-box.'

This could not be more true.  I've told people I deal with that I could write a report that would make you look like the devil or describe the exact same events and make you seem like a saint.  It's one of the key things I stress with my people and their reports, be careful how you word things because you could be perceived as prejudicing the matter or making yourself look too invested in a certain outcome.  It's very important for my job, but for journalists being a wordsmith is their job.  I've even noticed blatant errors in reports on major news sites, so editors seem to be failing at their job as well.  Not to mention it's the editors picking the inflammatory clickbait article titles.

Quote:Which, with the last one, is great, except there's not enough warm bodies in news rooms these days doing the traditional in the box style of digging up facts and putting them out there unpolished.

Agreed on this as well.  It seems to me that the journalism profession is at a crossroads with the choices being to continue down the TMZ road or return to the Woodward and Bernstein mode.  Sadly, I fear the wrong choice is going to be made.