- Joined
- Mar 12, 2021
Absolutely. The local journo jobs got squeezed when big conglomerates bought them and slashed their newsrooms, leaving fewer ways to work your way up the pipe. Instead, the big papers started hiring straight out of the nepo baby Harvard pool, fresh-faced 20somethings that politicians could easily fist like sockpuppets and get them to buy into the government's vision for changing the world. Hard-nosed journalists who have actually worked the beat for years would never beclown themselves as fast and as enthusiastically as the generation raised on Watergate hagiography.
Ben's not wrong that journalism is a dumpster fire on the elite level. Down the line, it's only bad because of what has happened at the top, leaving fewer ways for real people to get a word in.
Ben's problem is that he has neither the clear-eyed understanding of a beat reporter who actually cares about a community nor the cultural nuances of the elite. He did everything he could to mold himself into the apparatchik they wanted. He was just bad at it, and they have no use for someone who hasn't been raised in the social milieu of winks and nods that would have enabled him to know the things he wasn't supposed to say out loud. He failed at being a lowly but honorable member of the working class because he longed to be more and found that he's actually completely useless to both groups. MANY. SUCH. CASES.
In a
scenario, someone at NBC is trying to right the ship a little, as the NYT did when they realized their reporters were absolutely insane. But I think they just realized he's a liability because he doesn't fit in.
