Long gone are the days of fast-talking, whiskey-swilling Murray Kempton peers eloquently filling columns with daily dish on government scandals, mobsters and police corruption. The sort of in-your-face challenge that the Fourth Estate once posed for politicians has been replaced by mud-slinging, lies and, where it ought not be, timidity. When I started out in journalism the newsrooms were still full of old guys with blue collar backgrounds who got genuinely indignant when the Governor lied or somebody turned off the heat on a poor person’s apartment in mid-January. They cussed and yelled their ways through the day, took an occasional sly snort from a bottle in the bottom drawer of their desk and bit into news stories like packs of wild dogs, never letting go until they’d found and told the truth. If they hadn’t been reporters most of those guys would have been cops or firefighters. It was just that way.
Now the blue collar has been fully replaced by white ones in America’s newsrooms, everybody has college degrees. The “His Girl Friday” romance of the newshound is gone. All too many journalists seem to mistake scandal mongering for tenacious investigation, and far too many aspire to make themselves the story. —Laurie Garrett —Laurie Garrett’s memo to Newsday colleagues (PoynterOnline)
I don’t think this site offers a permalink to the individual memos, but this one was dated 28 Feb, 2005.