The Press/Our Oldest Profession

...This presents a Disneyesque vision of the press of 2007: a world of audience participation, columnists in clown suits, animation, adaptation, cartoon versions...

...Editor, publisher, chairman of the board, and CEO, Mr...

...This is the year that Eugene Patterson, chairman of the St...

...It is safe to assume that all reporters are journalists, all journalists are professionals, and the purpose of the profession is to illuminate our complex, interdependent world for readers who are otherwise paralyzed and confused by the onslaught of data, imagery, video, audio, trivia, and numbers in which the information revolution has buried us chin deep...

...But after Patterson, who...

...Two decades ago, NATO was in crisis, young people were feeling restless and disaffected, old people sensed they were forgotten and scorned, scoundrels were plentiful while heroes were scarce, the scales of justice were unevenly weighted, growth was explosive, indiscriminate, unforeseen, unplanned, and in chaos, schools were passing students but failing society...

...Jacqueline Bouvier is once again in fashion...

...Newspapers may read the same, but it is uncertain whether they will look the same, too...

...The other certainty is that the American press will be subject, in some form or other, to chilling effects on its freedom to print...

...Those are the certainties...

...William E Buckley, Jr...

...Seminars- and conventions have grown accustomed to his face...

...Similarly, when the New York Times Magazine publishes the diary of an orderly in an AIDS hospice, and discovers to its comparative dismay that the orderly is in fact a graduate student in semiotics who has based his imaginative account on the composite recollections of certain friends, and friends of other friends, the Times will write an eloquent editorial explaining all this to readers, but the Times Company will underwrite a symposium on ethics at the Columbia School of Journalism...

...No fourteen-part series, no op-ed piece, no lead editorial, no question-and-answer, no sidebar, analPhilip Terzian, a contributor since 1975, is the deputy editorial page editor of the Providence Journal...

...If American journalism has enjoyed the benefits of a pontificator-general, it has Mr...

...People buy newspapers, but people make them, too, and it is reasonable to suppose that while the juvenile writers of today will be transformed into theworld-weary editors of tomorrow, the problems that populate the newsroom will proliferate in twenty years...

...The British dominated Broadway, Broadway was a shadow of its former self, Times Square was uninhabitable, the South was on the rebound, California led the nation, craftsmen were disappearing (and their skills were going with them), standards had fallen while revenues had risen, Americans yearned for a simpler, easier, earlier time...

...Once the ethic has taken root, it is difficult to dislodge, and because the presumptions of one generation are passed on to the next in the costume of principle, it may be supposed that the commercial success of USA Today is likely to be translated into editorial law...

...Now, of course, it is the liability crisis that has had a chilling effect on the lively and once-healthy investigative tradition in American reporting...

...Richard John Neuhaus "One of the most proficient minds of our time...

...Read the prospectus carefully before interest payments and liquidity at the aggre- you invest or send money gate bid price of the underlying securities Mail to: (which will fluctuate), so you can sell your Drexel Burnham units at any time...

...There is an object for 2007: electing a pontificator-general of the press...

...David M. Oshinsky, New York Times Book Review "The best informed and most hard-hitting account of a group—the 'New York intellectuals'—central to twentieth-century intellectual life and politics in America...

...All those journalism schools in search of a provost...

...Tony Kirk Conveniently priced at$904.21 per unit First Vice President–Investments and suitable for a broad range of investors, 7701 Forsyth, Suite 700 HITS is an investment whose time is here...

...Half the world went to bed hungry...

...Petersburg Times, has begun the measured process of laying down his burden...

...That much will be known...

...H ow true—and how important one last suggestion might prove...

...There will be gathered the editors of the Times, the Washington Herald, the Philadelphia Record, the Los Angeles Daily Mirror, the Cleveland Press, and the National Observer...

...Police reporters still phoned in names and let desk men write their stories...

...A. scholar, a teacher, .a man full of—wisdom...

...Patterson to thank for his services to duty...

...The Washington press corps, for example, seems actually to believe that the number and frequency of presidential news conferences has something to do with the quality and quantity of usable knowledge...

...connoisseurs of forewords are familiar with his words...

...The appearance of newspapers now is not radically different from two decades in the past...

...xx + 276 pp., $29.95 Available at bookstores or from The University of-North Carolina Press Post Office Box 2288 Chapel Hill, NC 27514 (919) 966-3561 formation revolution will fully be upon us, half of Americans will be healthier but .not happier, the other hundred million will be happier but not healthier, Soviet women will be increasingly fashion-conscious, South African progressives will be close to despair, the Roman Catholic Church will be wrestling with change, our family farmers will be in crisis, the welfare system will cry out for reform—all in this complex and globally-interknit world...

...Patterson is also a doyen of the Pulitzer Prize board, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the ASNE Foundation,the Society of Professional Journalists (Sigma Delta Chi), the American Press Institute, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies—not to mention four years' service on the Civil Rights Commission...

...The remarkable fact about USA Today is not that it has succeeded in its primary aims—to gain readership and make money—but that it has been nearly as influential as it has been profitable...

...no crisis of confidence is endured without his counsel...

...His lapses, gaffes, indiscretions, perceived insensitivities, flip-flops, and departures from orthodox opinion have given more than one bureau chief a second career analyzing the chilling effects of such executive ineptitude on our First Amendment privileges, the safety of civil liberties, the integrity of politics, and the inalienable right of a free and independent press to make partisan points by subjective means with fictional sources, not for attribution...

...it is not wanting for money, threatened by the Japanese, falling into disuse, or losing its way...

...Allen Neuharth, however, has clouded the future...

...the other_ half enjoyed the miracle of television...

...By the year 2000, we shall no doubt have learned: the population bomb will have finally exploded, the inWill Herberg From Right to Right by Harry J. Ausmus Foreword by Martin E. Marty "Always informative, frequently brilliant, Will Herberg is a book for these times...

...Those with a mind to change things now will find to their dismay that things can't be changed...

...32.50 cloth, $1 2 . 95 paper PHILIP Mary RAIIV Mc DWIGHT riAttvry SWADOS MAX`"""" Amid nilling I:171 SIDNEY EA 71n, a 4, HOOK F4 ysis, book review, business forecast, sports wrap-up, humor column, health page, movie review, or publisher's letter to readers will begin, "By the year 2000 . ." For that we can offer some thanks, with relief...

...Certain obvious candidates spring quickly to mind—Thomas Winship, Michael Gartner, Reg Murphy, Gene Roberts, John Seigenthaler—and it may even prove that one strides to the front...

...Patterson's burden is nearly as formidable as his tidy reputation...

...Chilling effects, after all, are usually self-perceived...

...The Neuharthian bubble is likely to burst—even PM finally went out of business—but the besetting sin of journalism is precedent, not sensation...

...drama critics were failed actors, court reporters were policemen manquA, headlines described the stories, not the writers of headlines, and Walter Lippmann appeared on the editorial page...

...Alfred Kazin xvi + 44o pp...

...That is why the nine-part series of 1987 will no doubt become the nineteen-part series of 2007—or better yet, given the advances in printing technology, what would now be spread out 60 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1987 over two weeks of tedium might then be made a supplement or section to itself...

...Who would have thought that the least instructive aspects of the nation's most superficial newspaper would be eagerly adopted by publications that had somehow prevailed before the invention of McPaper...

...1 3 06%* HITS HIGH INCOME TRUST SECURITIES Designed to generate a high level of cur- Series 13, including charges and expenses, rent income, HITS–High Income Trust Securi- call Tony Kirk at 314-889-4935, 1-800ties–is a Unit Investment Trust with a 392-8774 (MO), or 1-800-325-8180 (all professionally selected, broadly diversified other states) and ask for a complimentary portfolio of high yield corporate bonds...

...Sports pages now feature color pictures of teenaged archers...

...For example, it is a safe wager that between four and six conferences will be held during 2007 to examine the scandalously low rate of minority hiring, and minority retention, in American newspapers...

...Herberg's restless mind and soul anticipated many of today's debates about the connections between religion, ideology, and politics...

...The inquiring photographer is lurking among us...

...Please send me your HITS Series 13 Prospectus...

...Indeed, the temperature has dropped so low in some places that certain publications are even practicing a disturbing form of self-censorship from fear of litigation—employing the judicial system, it might be said, as a substitute for what used to be called editorial judgment and discretion...

...Alas, Phil Donahue will have retired by 2007, but the John F Kennedy School of Government will still furnish conference rooms and auditorium space for lamentations, exhortations, confessions of guilt, and pledges of reform...

...No congressional hearings on freedom of information have been complete without him...

...The topics are not difficult to imagine: "The Changing Face of Judaism," "Women Prisoners Speak Out," "Yearning to Breathe Free: An Immigrant's Odyssey," "Who Gets Insured," "Gay in Ohio," "Journey to the People's Republic," "National Security: Bigger Isn't Better," "The Gift to Be Simple: Shakers Remember," "Living With the Bomb," "Report Card on the Colleges," "Crisis in Day Care: What About the Children...

...Twenty years ago, reporters were still generally called reporters, and journalism was a vocation, or trade...

...Demographics being what they are, no one really knows what a minority might be, but it is certain that the proportion of X's in American society will not be matched by equal numbers on any newsroom floor...

...It will not be an easy task, for Mr...

...Yet just as Patterson's anointment was informal and offhand, it is likely his successor bears the burden alone...

...How splendid your volume...

...This will be variously ascribed to racism, sexism, chauvinism, the madonna-whore complex, the Protestant ethic, or selfishness and greed...

...the rest is speculation...

...Each will confess that such a story could have been published in her newspaper, but that the first duty of any journalist is to the truth—and that the bond uniting readers and writers is the maintenance of standards and assurance of integrity: "We not only betray our readers when we injure that faith," one will say, "but worst of all, we victimize ourselves by needless self-deception...

...The New York Intellectuals The Rise and Decline of-the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s by Alan M. Wald "A valuable book about the 'political trajectory' of this country's leading intellectuals over the past 50 years...

...Name Address Phone (Bus/Home) City/State/Zip_ Drexel Burnham Drexel Burnham Lambert Incorporated Member SIPC THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1987 61...

...Louis, MO 63105 For more complete information about HITS "This estimated current return represents net annual interest income after estimated annual expenses divided by the public offering price of $904.21 per unit on 11/9/87.Return varies with changes in either amount...

...Journalism does not need talent, education, imagination, or variety...

...All of these observations will be made, and at considerably longer length, in the year 2007...

...Without sharing Wald's fervent politics, I am full of admiration for his knowledge—this took a lot of detective work !—and for the incisiveness of his mind...

...Or send in the HITS Series 13also offers you monthly coupon...

...copy of the HITS prospectus...

...Who better to guide the birdcage liners as they find their way in the twenty-first century—to hearten reporters, to succor the media, to nourish foundations—than a pope of opinion, the pontiff of the press...

...front pages now look like Monopoly boards...

...It is well-researched, insightful, and extremely opinionated...

...Just as William Randolph Hearst taught that contests raise circulation, or Benjamin Bradlee demonstrated that gossip can be proved by simple publication, so USA Today has persuaded its brethren that color is important, statistics tell the story, and people purchase newspapers that catch their eye on newsstands...

...Today, as it happens, Walter Lippmann is all over the newspaper...

...all those newsroom funerals that could use an oration...

...To reach ahead twenty years, the interested observer need only look behind...

...Even the single most salutary editorial reform in modern journalism—the gradual decline and eradication of the man-in-the-street interview—seems on the verge of being undone...

...A model is not hard to discern: the editor, or retired editor, of a provincial metropolitan newspaper, more admired than read, less impressive than its prestige might otherwise suggest...

...Of course, the opposite is true: voluble Presidents are usually the least informative, and Ronald Reagan's infrequent appearances are far more abundant with grist for the mill...

...all those episodes of "Nightline" and presidential panels...

...It is, however, in desperate need of a constitutional monarch, a signer of messages, cutter of ribbons, deliverer of speeches, ceremonial recipient of honorary degrees...