Hard times at the bullshit factory

These are dog days in the journalism profession. Mainstream journo jobs have been downsized, rationalized, optimized, sanitized, professionalized, minimized, and just plain axed by the tens of thousands over the last decade or two.

Meanwhile, the J-schools keep pumping out new candidates for imaginary jobs.

There was a brief period as I was coming up when I toyed with the idea of a journalism career. It was the early '80's. Woodward and Bernstein were pop-culture icons. Journalism was a cool career that might even give you a chance to change the world!

I wrote a couple of things for the Ontarion, the student newspaper at the U of Goo. That was fun! I'd meet people at parties and they'd say hey, I read your article...

Made me feel good!

Then I wrote a feature on the Ontario Veterinary College. I interviewed a bunch of bigs at the college, including The Dean. These were folks who sported bespoke suits and ostentatious Rolex watches and liked to talk about the latest UN conference they'd attended, even though that's not what you were there to talk about.

The Ontario Veterinary College was the prestigious core around which an otherwise mediocre university had sprung up. It had just had its accreditation with the American Veterinary Medical Association downgraded to "probationary" status, which was something of a black eye. That's what I wanted to talk about.

A couple of hours after interviewing The Dean I got a call from his secretary. Mr. Dean wanted to proof my story before it appeared in public. This didn't agree with me. Although I've mellowed somewhat over the years, at the time I was the sort of obnoxious know-it-all who would have heckled Jesus as he was delivering the Sermon on the Mount.

I wasn't taking any guff from Mr. Dean.

So I published the story and sought the Dean's approval afterward, which pissed off not only him but a number of other well-dressed twats with nice wrist pieces, and that was the last story I had in the Ontarion.

Things are exponentially more fraught for working journalists today. Every in-house writer at any major title knows they are one story removed from becoming a blogger. These are smart people who, for the most part, know when they are writing bullshit, but they will keep writing it because they like the pay and perks that come with the position.

The kind of journalism practiced in the era of Oriana Fallaci, Molly Ivins, or IF Stone is long dead. Those more-or-less establishment writers would all be begging you to support their blog today. Mainstream journalism has become nothing more or less than the bullhorn of Empire.

That was of course always the case, but up until recently there was always room for dissenting voices within the mainstream.


Those days are over.