Came across this succinct appraisal of journalism — and journalism schools — in an interview that Campus Progess did with Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi, who is clearly going for the “Hunter S. Thompson” award:
“If you have no real knowledge or skill set and you’re lazy and full of shit but you want to make a decent wage, then journalism’s not a bad career option. The great thing about it is that you don’t need to know anything. I mean this whole notion of journalism school—I can’t believe people actually go to journalism school. You can learn the entire thing in like three days.
My advice is instead of going to journalism school, go to school for something concrete like medicine or some kind of science or something and then use the knowledge you get in that field as a wedge to get yourself into journalism. What journalism really needs is more people who are reporting who actually know something.
Instead of having a bunch of liberal arts grads who’ve read Siddhartha 50 times writing about health care, it would be really nice if some of the people who are writing about health care were doctors.”
Well, at least there’s some hope left for my friend Dr. Tony Hung, who writes over at Deep Jive Interests.