Journalism Wrap-Up

Journalists far and wide are still crying about Rupert Murdoch possibly owning the Wall Street Journal. Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff said a Murdoch-owned WSJ would suffer "the loss of a few points of I.Q., a quickened pace, a higher sense of drama, less accurate, perhaps, but less tedious too, and, likely, a keener instinct for following the money." So for all of you psych majors who thought IQ scores were static; you've apparently never met a journalist who was told to be fair. By the way, isn't the most precious tenet of journalism "following the money"?

LA Times' Tim Rutten shocks us with the real reason the NY Times and Baltimore Sun reject forced embargoes and try to wreck your Harry Potter night with pre-dawn spoilers; "...it's about money." Harry Potter spoilers, classified information spoilers, apparently Pinch Sulzberger has a different take on "follow the money."

The Chicago Times laid this shocker on us; their editorial board is going to follow their reporters by disgorging leftist dogma (no doubt propagated by miasmatic web urchins.) Because that's what America needs right now -- another leftist bastion of legacy media ink-barons in Middle America. After all, it's worked out so well for everyone else. And guess who's behind the moonbat shift? It all started with an email from Roger Ebert. Reportedly, he hasn't been this happy since he learned how to dump his Sno-Caps into his popcorn.

The pollyanna scribes at The News and Observer moil a thousand words defending John Edwards' haircut, including polling 300 readers. ... ... I wanted to come up with a joke about that, but I couldn't find anything more absurd to juxtapose against it. Islamic radicals wanted to reply to the article, but they're waiting for the centrifuges to stop spinning.

Finally, Boston Globe columnist Penelope Trunk defended her right to change what people say in their quotes to fit her view of the world:

As a journalist I hear all the time from people in business that they are misquoted. And you know what? People need to get over that, and I'm going to tell you why. ...If you do an interview with a journalist, don't expect the journalist to be there to tell your story. The journalist gets paid to tell her own stories which you might or might not be a part of. And journalists, don't be so arrogant to think you are not "one of those" who misquotes everyone. Because that is to say that your story is the right story. But it's not. We each have a story. And whether or not someone actually said what you said they said, they will probably still feel misquoted.

Fortunately for conservatives, changing the words of a moonbat would only make them look smarter. Penelope, you're so unethical you make Jayson Blair look like James Blair.

(A special shout-out to Newsbusters reader Dennis Miller. :)