I became very turned off to the "process" in the early seventies at the legendary campus of revolt, San Francisco State. As a young radical with a natural gift for language and stirring up controversy, I attended my first journalism class and was horrified.
While I wanted to learn investigative and researching techniques, the professors only interest was clearly himself. Quickly, I realized the only way to make it in journalism was to be the biggest suckup, and I would never qualify since attractive coeds who sucked up were automatically moved to the head of the line. And looking around the class, I remember noticing a number of attractive coeds.
I came to SF State to join the revolution but the only revolt I saw was the one growing inside me. I dropped out, spending ten years in the wilderness, deeply disillusioned by the phoniness, pettiness and smarminess that today we all take for granted in our "journalists."
Eventually, I found my calling as a businessman. Thats right. Always skeptical, always digging for truth, relentless questioning, combined with willingness to take a risk equaled success (modest to be sure, but success nevertheless).
Ironic to read Michael Wolff, in yet another blistering critique of the news business (November VF- if someone will create a link I would be much obliged), who sees the failure of US journalism in the polar opposite of my own experience. Journalism has failed because the editors today look at their jobs more like corporate marketing VPs. Its all about packaging the story line.
As I have written in previous diaries, this campaign has revived my fighting spirit like none since Nixon-McGovern, in no small part because of the blogging phenomenom, which is a nifty "end around" the major media's packaged inanity, to get at the truth.
While blogging cannot replace journalism, its growing readership continuously serves up corrections and reports the truth in such a way that the media must follow or be deemed irrelevant.