Political scribblers rated for superficiality -- there's an epidemic, it seems, of superficial journalism that doesn't even ask the five W's

Daytona Beach News-Journal reporter Mark Lane's supercilious column, below, engages in the typical journalistic malpractice of treating elections as a horse race, devoid of ideas.

He says of the Mica-Armitage race:

District 7, Rep. John Mica versus Faye Armitage. Interestingness for closeness to home and, well, nothing much else. A familiar face in his district since he first ran in 1992, Mica didn't even have an opponent in 2004 and won with 63 percent of the vote in 2006. He has a feisty and articulate but little-known Democratic opponent.

What a superficial excuse for a political journalist.

Here's the problem with journalism schools: they graduate both public relations and journalism majors from the same department. THis leads to contaminating journaliss with the sick values of the American public relations machine.

All state-supported journalism schools should be required to kick the PR departments out and send it to the business schools where they belong.

Here's another problem with journalism schools -- they don't teach much of anything.

The N.Y. TImes and other newspapers don't look for journalism grads so much as they look for graduates who know something.

The slickness has become a sickness. Ever since USA Today, every newspaper (even the Times) has been dumbed down, some more than others.

When you see a paper with really pretty layout, aping USA Today, ask yourself -- are they trying to reach my eyes or my mind.

Back to Mark Lane: he is self-indulgent with his emotions, unadorned by any interest in public policy or issues, and makes stupid remarks about Faye Armitage being "feisty" and "articulate."

That's a sexist, misogynist remark. People rarely call a man "feisty." People rarely call a white man "articulate."

I hereby challenge Mark Lane to a debate on journalistic values declining under the soulless pressure of the almighty dollar. I guess we'd have to set the debate in Daytona, since the News-Journal no longer circulates in St. Johns County, the victim of the dumbing-down of journalism, which means that fewer and fewer people actually buy a newspaper.

If publishers would learn that their business is selling news -- not pretty layouts -- and return to the days of substance, they could reverse their declining revenues and become profitable again.



If we had more courageous editors like former Washington Post Editor Benjamin Crowninsheid Bradlee, we might have avoided several wars and the meltdown of our economy. Remember the editor played by Humphrey Bogart in "Deadline USA" -- he was fearless, even as his own newspaper was closing down. Today's editors are too often Chamber of Commerce cronies like those described by Tom Wicker in "On Press" (1977), showering favorable puff pieces on the powerful, treating the largest employer and advertisers to free rides, free of investigative coverage.



"I hate shallowness." Those were the immortal words of FBI Assistant Director Mark Felt (a/k/a the confidential source "Deep Throat"), played by Hal Holbrook in the movie, "All the President's Men," speaking to Washington Post reporter BOb Woodward.

The least shallow, most thorough newspaper is the New York Times. It represents the standard of care for journalists. The Washington Post would be close if it weren't so smarmily a part of the power elite in Washington, D.C. -- it's frequently a press release for the State Department and other federal agencies (just like Tom Wicker said about tobacco and other Company Town newspapers 31 years ago).

Shallowness is what permeates Mark Lane's Daytona News-Journal column (below) and all too often contaminates the newspapers in America today.

Ed Slavin
Clean Up City of St. Augustine, Florida
www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
P.O. Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-471-7023
904-471-9918 (fax)