Journalists? Not in this city

Interesting comment from Mound of Sound, who says he was a member of the working press up to the late 70s. His comments on the so-called journalists we have now are bang on. They can't write, they seldom think and when they do think it's all about them - not about the story.

There are only two papers in Toronto that are even worth bothering about - The Globe and the Star. The Sun is laughable in all respects and it is sad to contemplate where it is today compared to where it was when it started, a fierce little paper made up primarily of Toronto Telegram staff who believed this city could and would support a third paper. It could and would but the The Sun isn't a paper - it's barely better than the yellow tabs you can find in supermarkets - but it is good for wrapping up watery garbage.

The National (!!) Post was born out of Conrad Black's slavish allegiance to all things right wing - Reagan, Bush, Thatcher etc. It never pretended to be a newspaper, settling instead for being chief cheerleader for the right wing point of view. When you put everything through a warped prism like that, it's not surprising the end result isn't given much credence. And if you think that's too harsh, take a look the next time you're in a store selling newspapers - the Post pile sits there as a silent rebuke to the philosophy and journalistic practices of its owners and managers.

But neither the Globe nor the Star should rest easy. If either one of them ever gets an editor who insists on journalists meeting minimal standards it will blow the other out of the water.

Take Robert Benzie of the Star. This guy hasn't done a decent piece of reporting in the last two years. Rude, boorish and uncouth at press conferences, he delights in taking antagonistic stances to cabinet ministers, the premier, the Opposition leaders etc. Benzie seems to think he's been appointed God and that he and he alone has a monopoly on the truth. Fact is, he's an idiot and he has yet to write one single story that explains what is happening at Queen's Park, that takes legislation or government decisions and explains to readers what is happening and why. That takes discipline and intelligence and a focus on writing to inform readers rather than writing to try to impress others with how mighty his pen is. The Star is badly served by this twit and readers are left with little insight and understanding about Queen's Park because Benzie has none. What should happen to him is he should be yanked back to the Star from QP and assigned general stories until he learns to be a reporter.

John Ibbitson of the Globe and Tim Harpur of the Star in the last three months have both provided stories on the Democratic campaigns of Obama and Clinton. They are better writers than Benzie, which isn't saying much and isn't hard to achieve, but their work was appalling for senior reporters. Neither of them wrote anything their two papers couldn't have gotten from Canadian Press - and at least the CP stories would have been relatively free of bias. Both Harpur and Ibbitson should be ashamed of themselves for passing off pack journalism views as their own.

We are badly served by journalism today. We have kids who know nothing about how institutions work expounding on events which they clearly don't understand and doing it in badly written formats. What is needed in today's dailies are editors who will hand an editorial back to a reporter and insist they now report the story they were assigned while leaving the editorializing to those assigned to write them. What is also needed are editors who ask the questions the readers ask and then force a reporter to go unearth the answers.

On the other hand, maybe it doesn't matter. There will always be the New York Times of the world and the Manchester Guardian and a handful of other papers run by professionals. And since most people are now looking to the internet for information and bypassing newspapers, the crap in the dailies matters less each day. Still, as someone who loves newspapers, it's sad to see the Globe and the Star heading the way of the dinosaur but they have only themselves to blame.