Elizabeth Renzetti delivers tutorial in shoddy journalism

Fifty years ago, when Nancy Pelosi was already clawing  her way into the upper reaches of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Party was known as the party of civil rights. By 2016, it was instead known as the party of Wall Street, and Nancy Pelosi is now the most powerful woman in America.

That's why it's hard to square her actual history of connivance with money and power with the portrait painted in Renzetti's editorial in today's Globe and Mail, where Pelosi is rendered an icon of progressivism.

Renzetti seems aware of the cognitive dissonance echoing through her article. The "progressive members of her own party (i.e. the DSA contingent) think she's part of the old guard..."

That's because she most assuredly is a member of the old guard! Who could think otherwise?

Yet, "they fall into line behind her when she demands it." She is "terrifying to her opponents, both Republicans and rebellious members of her own party" (i.e. the DSA contingent).

The most interesting question in US politics at the moment is how long will it take for the true progressives to either mute their progressivism, or get terrorized out of the party. My hunch is that the old guard will effectively muzzle them... forget the wealth tax, forget public health care, forget free post-secondary education; focus instead on symbolic gestures like clapping back at Trump!

That's "resistance," Pelosi style!

Renzetti also gets a shot at a book review this week, giving us the low-down on former NYT executive editor Jill Abramson's tell-all, "Merchants of Truth."

Alas, the biggest story around this title for the past week has been a plagiarism scandal! Seems the esteemed NYT alum who penned "Merchants of Truth" especially likes lifting the work of students at Toronto's own Ryerson Journalism School!

That's the kind of dishonesty that empowers those who want to paint the journalism profession with the "fake news" label. The fact that Renzetti can pen a two thousand word book review without so much as a single line acknowledging the plagiarism controversy strikes me as a little... dishonest.

Semi-literate Bruce County bumpkin beats professional journalists to the story by months

Here's a headline from Maclean's that caught my eye; Donald Trump and Bill Clinton once posed together, America learns.

Indeed!

Most sentient Americans would already know that Trump and the Clintons have been pals since the embryonic stage of Bill's political career, but unpaid intern Aaron Hutchins at Maclean's perhaps did not. He simply cribbed his story from NBC or Politico or one of the other US sources that have been pushing this non-story for the last couple of days.

Here's the Falling Downs take on the Trump - Clinton relationship from a couple months ago, complete with a picture of the Trumps and the Clintons engaged in a hair-pulling, eye-gouging death match. Maybe they're not teaching the new journos about Google Images down there at Ryerson University J-school.

Politico's version also caught my eye; New photos show Bill Clinton yukking it up with Donald Trump...

Yukking it up? Sounds familiar... oh ya, I used the expression "Donald Trump yucking it up with Al Sharpton..." a couple of months ago about this picture.





Hey, maybe in a couple of months Aaron and his crew at Maclean's will discover that one too! I can already see the headline; Anti-racism crusader Reverend Al Sharpton and Donald Trump once posed together, Americans learn.

Yukking it up.

Journalism is... doomed

I see where Carleton and Ryerson and Postmedia remain major sponsors of the Journalism Is... PR campaign designed to entice gullible youth into a journalism programme.

Wonder how that's working out?

I don't imagine Postmedia will remain a corporate sponsor of this campaign for much longer. Postmedia Networks has sacked more journos in Canada than any other employer over the past few years, so the brazen hypocrisy of their sponsorship is eventually going to contaminate the entire campaign.

Journalism used to be an honourable profession, one that I contemplated committing to at one time. Had a few stories in the Ontarion back in my U of Goo days. It was all fun and games when you're getting high with the Downchild Blues Band, but write something critical about the Big Dogs at the OVC, and all of a sudden "journalism" got downright creepy.

Yup, the Rolex crowd didn't waste any time letting me know what I had to change in my stories.

Oddly enough, the hippy dippy rebels running the Ontarion at the time were more than a little ambivalent about exposing the bullying of those Big Dogs. Truth be told, I pretty much knuckled under too.

So it was with some mixture of nostalgia and bemusement that I read Marsha Lederman's impassioned paean to the profession in today's Globe. Marsha's getting the A2 space these days, so obviously the big dogs at the Globe are on board.

According to Marsha, professional journalism has forestalled many a catastrophe in these times. For instance, it was only the professional journalists at the Toronto Star who short-circuited the second term of mayoral nightmare Rob Ford.

Maybe.

What I recall of that fiasco is that the "professional journalists" were pretty much as cringe-worthy as Fat Ford himself. Ya, on one side you've got this dude with obvious substance abuse problems, and on the other side, the side of virtuous professional journalism, you've got folks buying up videos of Ford's drunken rants to better facilitate the mayor's public shaming.

JournalismIS... that?

I'd like to think not.

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be journalists

So Junior wants to go off to Carleton or Ryerson or Columbia for a few years to study up for a career in journalism?

Just say no!

First of all, a journalism degree is a ticket into the precariat. After four or five years Junior will be lucky to find him or herself in an unpaid internship.

Even "real" journalists who get paid find themselves recycling corporate press releases and passing them off as "news."

For example, Christina Blizzard had a great article across the Sunmedia (soon to be a division of Postmedia, because two stinkers make a rose...) chain on Feb. 12 about how we can save a lot of money on policing. Good solid journalism, eh? She even talked to Stephan Cretier, boss of one of the worlds biggest private security outfits, Garda. Her keen investigative journalism reveals that we can replace a lot of $100,000/yr cops with $40,000/private security guards.

Dig around a little, and you'll soon discover that all she's done is recycle this Jan. 29 Garda press release!

That's what passes for "journalism" today.

Journalism was once an honourable profession.

And PS, the only mall cop making 40k is some poor shmuck with no life working three or four double shifts every week.