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Jason Whitlock's letter to Barack Obama

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Alma, Mar 26, 2008.

  1. shotglass

    shotglass Guest

    As soon as I care what Thomas Sowell has to say on the Kansas City Chiefs, I'll care what Jason Whitlock has to say on Barack Obama.

    There. That wasn't navel-gazing or difficult.
     
  2. "...a national conversation about racial harmony toward some deontological discussion on black responsibility."

    The greatest clause in the history of the board.
     
  3. 21

    21 Well-Known Member

    (psst...what's it mean??)
     
  4. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    Ha ha.
     
  5. broadway joe

    broadway joe Guest

    I don't get why people have such a problem with that aspect of the discussion. Is this not a journalism board? It's not navel gazing, it's talking shop. What are we supposed to do, talk about Whitlock's weight?
     
  6. Alma and I promised never to tell.
    We're Templars, you know.
     
  7. Simon_Cowbell

    Simon_Cowbell Active Member

    Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
     
  8. spnited

    spnited Active Member

    I guess it's tough admitting a guy you treat like a god is a fraud and a hypocrite.
     
  9. shotglass

    shotglass Guest

    You're quaint. In a Rowan Atkinson/Murray Feldman kind of way.
     
  10. Frank_Ridgeway

    Frank_Ridgeway Well-Known Member

    I don't think Jason is unqualified to write this column because he's a sports writer. I think Jason is unqualified to write this column because he is a writer who spends most of his time covering sports. His opinion is no more or less informed than ours, or those of the Star's restaurant critic or the person covering a suburban town in a bureau, and perhaps even less informed than some of his newspaper's readers. To my knowledge, Jason has spent no time on the campaign trail. From what I can tell, Jason has spent no time with Obama yet feels qualified to pretend to be him, to psychoanalyze him, to explain him to thousands of readers. All Jason offers is an ability to write effectively and choose a stance that might provoke an emotional but superficial reaction, but he has no firsthand knowledge and his vantage point is no better than anyone else's.

    Newspapers need to do a lot better than that. It is not a problem of where it ran, but that it ran at all. This was in The New York Times this week:

    Among the newspapers that have chosen not to dispatch reporters to cover the two leading Democratic candidates on a regular basis are USA Today, the nation’s largest paper, as well as The Boston Globe, The Dallas Morning News, The Houston Chronicle, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Baltimore Sun, The Miami Herald and The Philadelphia Inquirer (at least until the Pennsylvania primary, on April 22, began to loom large).

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/us/politics/26bus.html?adxnnl=1&ref=media&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1206644928-MZE0PCKypicZw2x8Bjz48g

    Good God, this is an election that is changing American history in all kinds of ways, yet near as I can tell, The Star is running AP copy from the campaigns, and its full-time political columnist has no datelines on anything recent, making the Star's campaign insights no more valid than some blogger writing from a basement. If The Star were devoting reasonable resources to covering the biggest story of the year, I might have less of a problem with a sports writer being given this freedom. But in the absence of assigning professionals to the subject, Jason's words carry a disproportionate weight (no pun, yadda yadda) with The Star's readers and turn the whole thing into one big joke.

    I've said before that newspapers ought to get out of the opinion game because it's so readily available elsewhere. But if they are going to print opinion, it ought to at least be informed opinion, based on reporting rather than someone just spouting in order to get a reaction. It's talk radio. It's worthless.
     
  11. Simon_Cowbell

    Simon_Cowbell Active Member

    I can count my disagreements with your posts on one hand, but I just used up a finger on this one.
     
  12. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    Well, Frank made a pretty interesting argument. What's your counter-argument?
     
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