Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"The problem is that writing on deadline is hard to begin with. Writing on deadline about a subject you're only modestly knowledgeable about is even harder. The newsroom is a place of generalist bravado, in which most reporters feel perfectly qualified to write about anything, even if they're flying blind. They'd better feel that way, since their editors ask them to do so all the time." -- Scott Rosenberg, 2005-04-20, Salon

The whole piece isn't very long, and I suggest reading the whole thing, but since I'm sure more folks will click the cut-tag than follow the link to Salon, here's a bit more that I thought was interesting:

Until recently, each reader who saw the holes in the occasional story he knew well was, in essence, an island; and most of those readers rested in some confidence that, even though that occasional story was problematic, the rest of the paper was, really, pretty good. Only now, the Net -- and in particular the explosion of blogs, with their outpouring of expertise in so many fields -- has connected those islands, bringing into view entire continents of inadequate, hole-ridden coverage. [...] Within a very short time we've gone from seeing the newspaper as a product that occasionally fails to live up to its own standards to viewing it as one that has a structural inability to get most things right.

[...] Coverage of important news by smart generalists -- disinterested generalists -- remains of great public value. But too many practitioners of this venerable art have grown (figuratively) fat and lazy from their monopoly position. They're not used to being challenged, they don't like being challenged, and too often their first reflex when challenged is to question the motive of the challenger.

Now the monopoly is fraying, the challenges are coming on in a wave, and the entire field is at a crossroads. As a profession, journalism has a choice: It can persist in a defensive, circle-the-wagons stance, pretending that nothing has changed. (The public has spontaneously and inexplicably decided to withdraw its trust from journalists! How strange! Let's wring our hands and wait for the madness to pass.) Or it can accept the presence of millions of teeming critical voices as a challenge to shape up and do a better job.

It's hard work, and it requires a level of humility that is not yet in wide enough supply in the newsrooms I've known. But most journalists are, or once were, idealists, and I think enough of them still wake up in the morning wanting to seek out and tell the truth [...]