Thursday 30 August 2018

Media Quotes of the Week: Journalists hit back at claims they're posh playthings of media moguls to Corbyn accused of trying to tame a hostile press



Owen Jones @OwenJones84 on Twitter: "The media is one of the most socially exclusive clubs in Britain, and most of our press are the playthings of super rich media moguls. That's bad for our democracy."


Matt Kelly @mk1969 on Twitter on Owen Jones: "White priveleged Oxbridge-graduate Guardian columnist railing against how hard-done the left is in mainstream media. he couldn’t lace the boots of some of the great left wing journalists i’ve had the privilege of working with. but none of them could match his talent for whining."

Manchester Evening News investigations editor Jennifer Williams @JenWilliamsMEN on Twitter: "Feel free to argue with me, Owen Jones, about where my public interest journalism comes from, which mogul is telling me and my colleagues across the country what to do and how to do it and how my relative poshness is a factor...Because actually here’s the thing: you earn your living writing polemic, which is fine, that’s a thing. But I earn my living doing public interest journalism. I know more about it. And if I sound angry it’s because I am. I’m absolutely f***ing sick of this.”


News editor at @ChronicleLive in Newcastle Sophie Barley @SophieBarley on Twitter: "You clearly have no insight into the world of journalism. You get to the top by being f****** good at what you do, never stopping, working all hours for the job you love and most imprtantly - passion. It has jack all to do with education."


Richard Horsman on his blog: "In regional news, over forty years, I've known very few posh folk. A few have passed through newsrooms, using them as stepping stones to something else, but the huge majority of local and regional journalists are fiercely dedicated to what they do within the communities they serve. They are united by an outlook of apolitical cynicism, a love of storytelling and an instinct to spot the quote at fifty paces. They enjoy highlighting injustices and the absurd, and especially challenging authority. They do all this for very little money over stupid hours in places the "elite" only set foot in at election times, or to write opinion pieces about depravation."


Yorkshire Post editor James Mitchinson on Medium/Behind local News on the paper's in-depth journalism: "High quality public interest journalism is not necessarily all about driving page views. Don’t get me wrong, we know how to do that — in the second half of 2017 www.yorkshirepost.co.uk was the fastest-growing audited large regional news site in the UK — but the seven week-long specials we have put together have been more about giving our readers the very best journalism in the best interests of the communities we serve. That’s why we exist and why we’ll remain relevant enough for our readers to want to preserve and protect that which we do. If we lose sight of that in the hunt for clicks, we’re already extinct."

David Aaronovitch @DAaronovitch on Twitter: "When someone tells you, confidently, that journalism is THIS or THAT (speaking truth to power, holding a mirror to society etc), it's always bullshit. Ask yourself, does the report on the 3rd Test or which shoes to wear this summer fit this cliche?"


The Financial Times in a leader on Jeremy Corbyn's proposed media reforms: "Mr Corbyn’s criticisms are not all misplaced. The British media has a low trust rating, it lacks diversity and the phone hacking scandal was a disgrace. Yet it is hard to avoid the conclusion that these are the pretexts for action. His own media sympathies do not breed confidence. A commitment to a free and honest media would be more convincing were he not so enamoured of Iran’s Press TV, Russia’s RT and the communist-leaning Morning Star. There is room for a serious debate about improving UK media. But the Labour leader’s motives are all too clear. His remedies are less about freeing the press than taming it."


The Sun in a leader"Jeremy Corbyn's sole motive in “changing the media” is to silence a hostile Press. The giveaway was when he attacked broadcasters yesterday for following up Sun stories. “Just because it’s on the front page of The Sun or Mail doesn’t automatically make it news,” he whined. Could this be because recent front pages have exposed Labour’s racism? That IS news, as page one stories in the two biggest daily papers tend to be. Britain already has the world’s most vibrant media. Corbyn is feigning some high-minded interest in improving it. But the last thing he wants is it holding a future Labour Government to account. He detests scrutiny, as his tantrums sparked by tricky questions prove."


Mick Hume on Spiked: "Corbyn is exploiting public concerns about the big tech firms’ behaviour as a shield behind which to pursue Labour’s own media-bashing plans. Look at what his woolly words mean. Corbyn wants to invest taxes in more ‘public-interest journalism’ – which appears to be an unquestionable Good Thing. The question it should always raise, however, is – who is going to decide exactly what the ‘public interest’ means? Government ministers? Judges? Jeremy Corbyn’s press office?"


Sarah Baxter in the Sunday Times [£]: "I wouldn’t trust Corbyn’s intentions towards the media under any circumstances. This is a Labour politician whose organ of choice for disseminating his views before he became leader was Russia Today — now RT, the propaganda channel for Putin — and Press TV, Iran’s mouthpiece. Boris Johnson made his biggest diplomatic blunder as foreign secretary when he wrongly suggested that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe — now spending time outside jail with her young daughter for the first time in two years — was “teaching people journalism”, so we know what the Iranians think of a free press."



The Guardian in a leader"Then there is the issue of “fake news”. Mr Corbyn should have addressed the subject much more substantially than he did in his speech. A parliamentary committee said last month that fake news and the targeting of hyper-partisan views on social media put democracy at risk. Mr Corbyn could have endorsed what MPs recommended: that social networks should be legally responsible for harmful and illegal content on their platforms, and regulators should undertake an audit of the entire social media advertising industry. It was disappointing instead that he chose to attack newspapers, which, he said, people thought 'churn out fake news day in, day out'."


NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet in a statement on Corbyn's speech: “As a trade union we would agree on the importance of empowering journalists to act ethically, increasing diversity and equality in the media, tackling the concentration of media ownership and power, and enabling media workers to have a louder voice in their own workplaces and on decision-making boards. The NUJ is not affiliated to any political party but it is important that politicians recognise the vital role of independent public interest journalism, and the grave price that some journalists have paid with their lives for speaking truth to power. We hope this speech is just the start of a more detailed discussion about how to bring change to the media that benefits journalists, journalism and society as a whole.”

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Thursday 23 August 2018

Media Quotes of the Week: From Corbyn says tax digital giants to fund public interest media to new journalism and PR degree is sign of bad times



Jeremy Corbyn in the Alternative MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival: "One solution to funding public interest media could be by tapping up the digital monopolies that profit from every search, share and like we make. Google and news publishers in France and Belgium were able to agree a settlement. If we can’t do something similar here, but on a more ambitious scale, we’ll need to look at the option of a windfall tax on the digital monopolies to create a public interest media fund.”

Corbyn on supporting local and community media: "This important part of the media, and its fantastic workforce, could be supported by reform and expansion of an existing BBC scheme, which sees ring fenced funding for ‘local democracy reporters’ employed in local papers. Part of these funds could be made available to local, community and investigative news co-ops, with a mandate to use significant time and resources reporting on public institutions, public service providers, local government, outsourced contractors and regulated bodies.”

Corbyn on editorial standards: "The owners and editors of most of our country’s newspapers have dragged down standards so far that their hard working journalists are simply not trusted by the public...I want to see journalists and media workers set free to do their best work, not held back by bosses, billionaire owners, or the state."

The Guardian reports: "The Labour party has formally complained to the press regulator Ipso about the coverage by several British newspapers of Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to lay a wreath at a cemetery in Tunisia. In its complaint, the party said the Sun, the Times, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Express and Metro had misrepresented the event, which the Labour leader attended in 2014."


Stephen Bush in the Sunday Times [£]: 'The first journalist to reveal Corbyn’s activities [in Tunisia] was . . . Corbyn himself. In 2014 he wrote up his trip for the Morning Star. Corbyn is still a regular reader of the far left daily (he is sometimes spotted texting Abbott about the contents of the paper in shadow cabinet meetings). That made some of the party’s official denials look more than a little ridiculous. Adding to the sense of farce, the party’s line seemed to change repeatedly over the course of the row."


Donald Trump @realDonaldTrump on Twitter: "There is nothing that I would want more for our Country than true FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. The fact is that the Press is FREE to write and say anything it wants, but much of what it says is FAKE NEWS, pushing a political agenda or just plain trying to hurt people. HONESTY WINS!"


The Committee to Protect Journalists: "When American leaders stand up for a free press, they embolden courageous journalists who put their lives and liberty on the line to report the news. And when American leaders fall short, they embolden the autocrats who seek to repress those journalists."


John Naughton in The Observer on Trump's tweets: "Twitter could ban Trump, but with 53.8 million followers it’s unlikely to do that. Mainstream media could start ignoring Trump’s tweets, which effectively allow him to control their news agendas, but they won’t, because he’s good for clicks and circulation. And besides, the guy is, after all, the elected president of the United States. Which, in a way, neatly summarises the problem we’ve got."


Marc Reeves, editor of the Birmingham Mail and Birmingham Live, on HoldTheFrontPage“I doubt there’s an editor in the regions – or the nationals for that matter – who can say with hand on heart that the composition of their newsroom is as diverse as they would want it to be. In Birmingham, this is even more acute. We serve the most diverse city in the UK, yet our newsroom does not fully reflect the diversity of the communities we serve. We’ve known this for a long time, and I know journalism colleges are working hard on their own recruitment policies, but we have to take action on this directly. With the expansion of Birmingham Live and the creation of four new reporting roles, we have an opportunity to take control of the process and to try to affect something of a step change. We will ensure that at least 50pc of the candidates we shortlist for interview have black or minority ethnic backgrounds."


Jane Martinson on Metro in Prospect magazine: "In less than two decades, Metro has transformed from something described to one executive as a “shitty little freesheet” into a successful paper with a young audience who appreciates its basic news coverage. Whatever its future prospects, Metro has shown that there is a market, perhaps even still growing, for a newspaper based on facts in a world that increasingly seems to be anything but."



Paul Broster, director of journalism at the University of Salford, which is offering a new degree course combining journalism with public relations, as reported by Press Gazette: “The nature of journalism has changed, with those starting in the profession expected to have a wide range of digital skills alongside the ability to write well, find stories and interview. Our journalism programmes have always included a public relations module, but this has become increasingly popular over the years. Many of our journalism graduates now go on to work in public relations, while there is also a huge amount of opportunities helping large organisations raise their profile by creating powerful digital content.”





Nick Cohen @NickCohen4 on Twitter: "At least 70 UK universities are taking money off students for journalism courses. The majority cannot possibly get a job in the shrinking world of journalism. This is awful but in a sly way Salford is being honest and admitting that many will end up in PR."



Suchandrika Chakrabarti in the New Statesman"PR is already winning. What we really need is more well-trained journalists, and we need to find ways to keep them in the industry. If only someone could invent a degree to figure that out."

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Thursday 16 August 2018

Media Quotes of the Week: From Boston Globe leads press fightback against Trump to tea for reporters but no sympathy for Boris Johnson




Brian Stelter on CNNMedia: "The Boston Globe has been contacting newspaper editorial boards and proposing a "coordinated response" to President Trump's escalating "enemy of the people" rhetoric. 'We propose to publish an editorial on August 16 on the dangers of the administration's assault on the press and ask others to commit to publishing their own editorials on the same date,' The Globe said in its pitch to fellow papers."
  • More than 300 newspapers backing the Globe's initiative include the New York Times, The Houston Chronicle and The Miami Herald, as well as smaller publications like The Oakridger,  The Griggs County Courier and Steele County Press.
The Guardian in a leader: "A free press must call out intimidation and incitement when it exists. And it must do what it can to preserve respect for the facts and for balanced judgment. In short, it must do its job. Mr Trump’s insults and incitements are a calculated danger to that, and to the respect, civility and dialogue that should exist between the press and its readers. The Guardian stands with the US press in its efforts to maintain the objectivity and the moral boundaries that this president – like so many others in much more dangerous parts of the world – is doing so much to destroy."


UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein interviewed in the Guardian on Trump's attacks on the press: “We began to see a campaign against the media … that could have potentially, and still can, set in motion a chain of events which could quite easily lead to harm being inflicted on journalists just going about their work and potentially some self-censorship. And in that context, it’s getting very close to incitement to violence.”


BBC's director-general Tony Hall, as reported by BBC News, on the Cliff Richard privacy judgment: "The BBC has decided not to seek permission from the Court of Appeal to appeal against that judgment - even though we are advised and believe that the judge erred in law in finding that broadcasters and journalists, when reporting on matters in the public interest, normally have no right to publish the name of a person who is the subject of a criminal investigation. That issue is a matter of very considerable general importance, as the prime minister herself recognised on the day of the judgment."


Dan Sabbagh in the Observer: "Geordie Greig has told staff not to expect an immediate change in political coverage when he takes the reins from Paul Dacre, who spent 26 years in charge, for fear of alienating readers and because the wider political situation is so uncertain. Instead the focus will be on ensuring that the country achieves the least damaging form of Brexit and developing a more nuanced editorial line by next spring, a shift in emphasis that will be welcomed in Downing Street, where Theresa May is battling to control a revolt from the right of her party."

Alan Rusbridger on Geordie Greig in the Observer: "The 57-year-old Greig – who is taklng a number of like-minded lieutenants with him – will need formidable dexterity to turn around the tanker of thunderous Mail opinion in the space of weeks without confusing or alienating his readers. But it is not hard to imagine him adopting a Keynesian pragmatism, with his new newspaper telling readers: 'When facts change I change my mind.' If so, the rotating of the editorial guard at the Mail could prove to be a hugely significant moment in British political life."


Sam Coates in The Times [£]: "When I started in political journalism 13 years ago I decided not to vote in elections, telling myself this was a principled choice based on my job as a political correspondent. This decision has got easier every year."


Gavin Esler in The New European: "Hold journalists to account, sure. But most journalists – even ones you dislike – seek to debunk disinformation and expose lies. Instead of bashing decent journalists for the contortions demanded by the impossible ‘balancing’ act some are supposed to perform, let us encourage a re-think. In the post-Trump post-Brexit world, how can we re-build trust unless we can point out lies when they occur? Broadcasters, especially, need to reflect a wide range of opinions. But confronting expert opinion and elected representatives on television with articulate know-nothing non-experts of dubious provenance financed by who-knows-what, is not ‘balance’. It is a disservice to our people, our country, and to facts, accuracy and fairness."


NUJ organiser Chris Morley in a statement on new job cuts announced by Newsquest: "These new redundancies at Bradford now also risk an unhealthy workplace with staff being worked into the ground. This is inexcusable when the parent company is enjoying a multi million pound windfall from the currency changes. It seems to me that either US bosses are demanding too much from their British workers or the UK managers are failing to stand up for their staff. Either way this is a shoddy deal for Newsquest employees and the communities they are trying to provide a professional news service for."


News Media Association in a statement after Thurrock Council said it would no longer answer questions from the Thurrock Independent newspaper: “This attempt to silence the local paper by refusing to answer any questions constitutes a direct attack on the fundamental principles of press freedom and the public right to know. Local newspapers perform a vital role scrutinising authority on behalf of the public and holding power to account. Any attempt to frustrate or thwart this function is an attack on democracy and must be resisted.”


NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet on morningstaronline on local newspapers: "We are now in a situation when some sort of state funding is required to help fix the industry’s broken business model and support public-interest journalism so that courts are covered, planning decisions are questioned, health trusts are scrutinised and journalism can flourish in the communities it serves. Such funding must not be used to prop up the three major publishers which over the decades have bled their titles dry to pay out excessive profits to executives and shareholders and have not invested in journalism. Instead it should be used to rescue titles that are under threat from closure, perhaps helping a local co-operative to take over the title, and to aid start-ups for collaborative ventures and projects producing innovative and investigative reporting."


Paul Caruana Galizia, the son of murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, in The Times [£]: “Journalists are aware they may be killed in Malta and are not being offered protection, while the government is aggressively going after whistleblowers and anti-corruption activists.”



Lou Thomas @London_Lou on Twitter: "Journalists who accepted cups of tea and just laughed when Johnson* refused to comment: you are a disgrace to our profession and part of the reason reporters are barely as trusted as estate agents. You should be ashamed."

*Johnson, not Boris. He’s the subject of a story, not your friend. 

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Thursday 9 August 2018

Media Quotes of the Week: From I'm Mainstream Media and proud says Robert Peston to banning boozy lunches took the fun out of Fleet Street


Robert Peston @Peston on Twitter: "Pls give up trying to shame me by calling me MSM. It is pointless. I’ve worked for amazing MSM news organisations for decades. & some of you who use MSM as term of abuse wouldn’t recognize objective impartial journalism if it rolled over you in a monster truck. I am #MSMandProud"


Owen Joneson Twitter: "Periodic reminder that the British media, with some excellent exceptions, is absolute trash, which disproportionately attracts talentless people who use their ill-gotten platforms to bait Muslims, refugees, immigrants, benefit claimants, trans people and other minorities."


Will Bunch on philly.com: "The growing insanity of Trump’s rallies poses a threat to the free press, which is essential for making democracy happen. Showing some editorial restraint — and not airing unedited and unfiltered falsehoods and hate speech — would hardly make the media an enemy of the American people. In fact, that would be an act of tremendous love — for the truth."


Bret Stephens in the New York Times about receiving a death threat phone call: "Donald Trump’s more sophisticated defenders have long since mastered the art of pretending that the only thing that matters with his presidency is what it does, not what he says. But not all of the president’s defenders are quite as sophisticated. Some of them didn’t get the memo about taking Trump seriously but not literally. A few hear the phrase “enemy of the people” and are prepared to take the words to their logical conclusion. Is my caller one of them? I can’t say. But what should be clear is this: We are approaching a day when blood on the newsroom floor will be blood on the president’s hands."


Donald Trump at his rally in Pennsylvania, as reported by Huff Post, pointing at journalists: “These horrible, horrendous people back there.. [news media] can make anything bad, because they are the fake, fake disgusting news...What ever happened to the free press? What ever happened to honest reporting? They don’t report it. They only make up stories.”
  • Donald Trump @realDonaldTrump on Twitter: "The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People only because they know it’s TRUE. I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People. They purposely cause great division & distrust. They can also cause War! They are very dangerous & sick!"

Pete Vernon in the Columbia Journalism Review: "Given Trump’s consistent media-bashing, it’s not surprising that members of his administration would refrain from criticizing those who take the same line as the president. But as Trump and his allies in the media demonstrate their ability to foment public vitriol toward the press, perhaps it’s worth considering the reaction if the target were not a professional class like journalists, but rather a racial minority, or a group of immigrants. The mob behavior on display at these rallies is, at times, downright frightening."


Photographer Ricardo Vilanova on returning to Syria to face two of the captured "ISIS Beatles" who held him and other journalists hostage, as reported by Quentin Sommerville for BBC News: "The first thing I thought when I saw them was Gaddafi, or Saddam… Who were not able to face death .. they were exactly the same, they were able to torture and murder but when the moment arrived they handed themselves in order to survive. I think that´s despicable. I hope they spend the rest of their life in prison because dying is easy but spending the rest of your life in prison, especially in the same conditions they kept us hostage"


Mr Justice Mann quoted in The Times [£] on his Cliff Richard vs BBC privacy judgment: “It has been suggested that my judgment is remarkable in imposing a new blanket restraint on the reporting of the subject of a criminal investigations. That is an erroneous reading of my judgment. My judgment acknowledges that the reasonable expectation of privacy in the face of an investigation is a presumption or starting point that can give way to countervailing factors; the safety of the public is one example. The desirability of flushing out potential witnesses or more potential complainants is another, as the judgment itself acknowledges.”

Old Bell:Fleet Street
Colin Dunne in Press Gazette bemoaning the end of the pub lunch culture in Fleet Street: "It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. In between swifties and quickies and long lunches and early evenings, out of all this emerged some marvelous copy. The tabloids were full of fun and merriment and the readers loved them. Now they are full of spite and anger. That’s what egg-and-cress sandwiches do to a man."

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Thursday 2 August 2018

Media Quotes of the Week: From Sun gagged from naming flasher by Cliff privacy ruling to when journalists were working class troublemakers



The Sun reports"A TOP union official suspended over claims of flashing has used the Sir Cliff Richard privacy ruling to keep it secret. A whistleblower saw vile internet blog pictures of the person allegedly performing solo sex acts at work and on public transport. An internal investigation was launched but when The Sun made inquiries, the official hired expensive celebrity lawyers Carter Ruck in a bid to avoid being named. They argued that, as a judge last week ruled the BBC invaded Sir Cliff’s privacy by reporting a police raid at his home, the internal investigation was also private."


Society of Editors executive director Ian Murray  on the Cliff Richard privacy ruling: “Sir Justice Mann said that for anyone that was under an investigation it is now not legal under privacy laws to say that that individual is under investigation. You cannot name them. This has already had a deadening effect on the free press in England and Wales. I have spoken with editors and news editors who have said that they are not quite sure what to do now. It is not just naming someone but treading carefully about what the police are doing and whether the police are investigating somebody. If the police are raiding someone’s home for instance and it is reported to us can we now report that this is taking place? Is there a risk that we will actually be infringing someone’s privacy rights? At the very least this law needs to be clarified.”


The Times [£] in a leader on the Cliff Richard privacy ruling: "The ruling requires that the BBC pay substantial damages, amounting to £210,000, including an amount for damage to Sir Cliff’s reputation. This award goes far beyond that in any previous privacy case and will have a chilling effect on the media because it enables claims to be brought in privacy that have been traditionally brought under libel law. The BBC must also pay Sir Cliff’s costs, so far totalling £850,000. The judgment will have a predictable and damaging outcome: it will protect the wealthy and famous from scrutiny, and not only them. It is an incursion into the ability of journalists to report on matters of public interest, and specifically the actions of the police. If the media does not scrutinise the workings of the legal and policing system, then who will?"


CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta on Twitter: "Just a sample of the sad scene we faced at the Trump rally in Tampa. I’m very worried that the hostility whipped up by Trump and some in conservative media will result in somebody getting hurt. We should not treat our fellow Americans this way. The press is not the enemy."

Pic: Getty Images
New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger on his meeting with Donald Trump, as reported by the Washington Post: “I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous. I told him that although the phrase ‘fake news’ is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists ‘the enemy of the people.’ I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence.”


Fox News president Jay Wallace in a statement after CNN White House reporter Kaitlan Collins (above) was banned from a White House event for asking "inappropriate questions": "We stand in strong solidarity with CNN for the right to full access for our journalists as part of a free and unfettered press."


Jon Sopel in the Observer on covering Trump: "It is the reporting job of a lifetime. There’s no way I could have imagined this four years ago. On air, I’ve talked about grabbing pussy, shithole countries, and being spanked with a rolled-up magazine. I want to do it a while yet, but it is exhausting as well as exhilarating. It’s both my privilege and my curse."


The Economist @TheEconomist on Twitter: "In Asia, a region with 4.5bn people, only two countries, Taiwan and Japan, are considered to have a free press #OpenFuture."


Peter Sands in InPublishing on grammatical errors in copy: "What is really needed is a return to a culture where mistakes are not tolerated. I teach young journalists – national and regional, online and print. Almost all boast a degree or post-grad in journalism. After red-penning dozens of wrong possessive apostrophes, missing hyphens, misspellings, incorrect pronouns and mismatched verbs and nouns, I ask if anyone has gone through their copy in detail before. The answer is usually ‘no’. They have spent three years studying a degree in journalism and still write ‘a 27 year old engineer was electrocuted but suffered only minor injuries’, ‘its not known what the Cabinet are discussing’ and ‘Mo Salah who's 32 goal season broke the record’. It takes time and determination to learn the basic tools of their trade. And if the message from the top is that it doesn’t really matter, why should they make the effort? If the newsdesk allows misspellings in headlines and text on the website and if journalists get no feedback on basic errors, they will, understandably, believe grammar is a low priority."

Troublemakers: Lemmon and Matthau in The Front Page
Kyle Pope in the Columbia Journalism Review: "For students of journalism history, from The Front Page to the Daily Bugle, the dismal journalism jobs picture is familiar. For decades in America, reporters were working-class troublemakers, the kind of people who would walk into a room (or, more often, a bar) and prompt everyone else in the place to groan. Then, beginning in the late 1980s, journalism became professionalized. Reporters snagged book deals. They started appearing on TV. Their salaries climbed. That sense of being an outsider faded away. In fact, it was insider cred that a lot of these people most craved. Before long, journalism became cool...Now we’ve come full circle. Terrible pay for reporters, a shortage of jobs, even a social stigma in some circles have filtered the business to the point that most of the journalists I meet—and especially the young people trying to get into the field—are here because they desperately want to be here, and can’t imagine themselves anywhere else."

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