Quote:
Originally Posted by DonQuigleone
Doing "proper" Journalism is a lot harder then it looks. A lot of hard work goes into it.
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Of course. That goes without saying. Anything worth doing well takes a lot of effort and, sometimes, a fair bit of personal sacrifice. Even "bad" journalism takes a lot of work, but would readers and viewers really care? I don't think so. It's always easy, and far more enjoyable, to be an armchair critic.
I would qualify, though, that journalists — American journalists, especially — would do a lot better by dropping all pretence of being "champions of free speech and democracy". That's self-deception at best, and an outright lie at worst. We like to think of ourselves as storytellers but, more often than not, we're really no better than glorified gossipmongers. Once we're clear about this, that we are ultimately part of a business, there would be a lot less hand-wringing about the imminent demise of the "Fourth Estate" and more focus on what really needs to be done to save the industry and the profession.
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Here's a little something else to get more discussion going: Why should some jobs pay so much more than others? I mean, seriously, how does one justify the millions earned by bankers and sports stars, versus what's earned by an engineer who designs and builds something that's actually useful, rather than something dubious or simply for entertainment?