Journalism Finally Understood

Journalism Finally Understood

“Things reveal themselves passing away. “ — William Butler Yeats

by Craig Ladwig 
Indiana Policy Review

Reading analysis of the disaster that was the monologue at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the thought occurs: Can an entire generation in a given profession fail to reach maturity?

The old newsroom guard had warned precisely that. They said modern journalists lacked the judgment any readership expected, that they would be the ruin of the craft.

But then, in my memory at least, journalists have always been child-like. It goes along with certain attributes of good reporting, that is, a sincere curiosity about the world, a reflexive questioning of authority, a reckless willingness to demand that the adults in charge explain themselves.

What seems to be missing, rather, is that adult supervision.

To make this case, you need to become familiar with an antique desktop accessory, a  3-inch spindle or nail found on any senior editor’s desk right up until the mid 1970s.

These copy spikes often dated to the newspaper’s founding and had beautifully decorated brass bases. They were one of the first workplace hazards discovered by the Occupation Safety and Health Administration. This was so even though nobody in the newsroom had ever heard of anyone being injured by one or had ever known anyone who had heard of anyone being injured by one.

Anyway, it was on these spikes where editors “filed” rejected articles. This was done unceremoniously and without explanation, as in “What happened to the story you were working on?” “They spiked it.”

On the metro newspaper in which I came of age, any story submitted to the front page that hinted at what was disdainfully referred to as “human interest” was spiked. Readers were too busy, it was thought, for folderol.

To a young journalist, this seemed arbitrary and purposelessly demoralizing. Stories were spiked simply because they didn’t jibe with an editor’s experience or, perversely, didn’t strike him as particularly novel. The end product, though, could be safely read aloud to all ages at a breakfast table.

So how did we get from there to where the elect of the national press corps, assembled in self-congratulation over cocktails, laughs at jokes about vaginas and aborted babies?

I have an explanation, a historic one — maybe right, maybe wrong, but plausible.

About 40 years ago, around the time OSHA was confiscating our copy spikes, the proprietors of local newspapers began selling out to widely held national corporations. Wall Street thought the dailies were a good investment because of their reputation as being inflation-proof (want ads increased during bad times, display ads increased during good times).

Out went the irascible ideologue of a publisher with his country club friends and garden club wife. In came the ambitious manager on a five-year assignment and the narcissistic editors and advocacy specialists riding his coattails.

Morale improved markedly, as it does when the adult leaves the room. It was spitball time. No longer was there a political cliff, absolute prohibitions or other newsroom bummers. Anything went as long as it  reflected a sentiment first heard at a late-night dormitory bull session or it tore down a tradition, a more, a taboo or someone’s good name.

Gone were longtime journalistic standards, including the rule that no opinion would appear on the editorial page unless it could be imagined being held by an honest citizen in possession of the facts. Crackpots and scoundrels abounded, albeit well-intentioned and in some cases holding high office.

Incidentally, the latest edition of The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems is listing a new ailment. It is the “Immature Personality Disorder,” a condition akin to other impulse control disorders such as oppositional defiant disorder, intermittent explosive disorder and disruptive impulse-control disorder.

Going forward, that will explain a lot.

Craig Ladwig, editor of the quarterly Indiana Policy Review, is a veteran of hometown and metropolitan newsrooms in four states over as many decades.