You're right about jornalism. Our local paper writers apparently don't even run "spell check" on their work. Or "garmmar check" for that matter. I have seen sentances without a noun, and sentances with out a verb. Not to mention those where the verb modifies the wrong noun. How did these people score well enough on the SAT to get into college?
By the way, I hope that the train DID have somebody on board, otherwise there was a runaway train. YEESH.
Modeling the Pennsy and loving it!
Schuylkill and SusquehannaYou're right about jornalism. Our local paper writers apparently don't even run "spell check" on their work. Or "garmmar check" for that matter. I have seen sentances without a noun, and sentances with out a verb. Not to mention those where the verb modifies the wrong noun. How did these people score well enough on the SAT to get into college?
This is one of the funniest posts I have ever read on this forum.
(Presuming, as I do hope, however, that all the grammatical and orthological mistakes in it were in fact intentional...)
RME
Overmod Schuylkill and SusquehannaYou're right about jornalism. Our local paper writers apparently don't even run "spell check" on their work. Or "garmmar check" for that matter. I have seen sentances without a noun, and sentances with out a verb. Not to mention those where the verb modifies the wrong noun. How did these people score well enough on the SAT to get into college? This is one of the funniest posts I have ever read on this forum. (Presuming, as I do hope, however, that all the grammatical and orthological mistakes in it were in fact intentional...) RME
IT would be funny if it weren't so true!
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An old reporter long dead scoffed at schools of Journalism. He said any wishing to be a reporter should get a good liberal arts education. The emphasis should be on English, History and Politics with exposure to the Sciences.
The old reporter claimed he could teach the basics of writing a news story to any competent graduate in six weeks.
The old reporter did not just hang out in the same bar with his cohorts from the office. He made it a point to know a wide variety of people in the city he covered. Butchers, bakers, bankers, brakemen, etc. he developed a list of contacts he could use as a resource when needed to write a story.
The old reporter worked at the same paper for years. He was an anchor of his news room. He is now long dead.
News rooms now, especially in small markets, often lack such a veteran. Reporters come and go. The pay is low. Some move up. Many go into higher paying fields.
Students cost even less than low paid reporters. Many small market media outlets over utilize "J" school interns. These students are clueless about the area they are covering. Editors with a fraction of the old reporter's knowledge do not catch the errors of interns and green reporters as they should.
The old reporter was not out to save the world. He kept he kept his facts and his aim straight. The world was better informed when he covered an assignment. He is sorely missed.
The most common response today from journalism students when asked, "Why do you want to be a journalist?' is "I want to change the world."
That is the problem with today's journalist. Opinions over neutrality. A true reporter gives the who, what, when, where, why, and how without bias. They should be as intangible to a story as a good set of umpires in a baseball game.
When a "reporter" starts hunting the truth to fit his/her opinion we have crossed the line to editorial, commentator, or talk show host. Unfortunately most news stories today are printed or broadcast with this biased basis.
As Henry and others have stated, cutbacks in the newsroom is also partly to blame. However, any good editor should be able to weed out the bias in any news story. Unless the editor is the pushing mechanism for the bias in the first place.
I always read, watch, or listen to every news story with the thought that these are the same reporters who give us such "correct" reports on incidents involving railroading. Does this reporter know the subject he/she is currently reporting on as "correctly"?
Jay
John WR Henry, Isn't the issue here the fact that people who become journalists do so because they have the ability to write well? Their education is focused on the craft of writing rather than on any particular subject matter. Therefore they originally approach any subject as a learner. Over time a journalist may come to know one or more subjects and his or her ability to understand and report them will improve. Some become real experts in a field. But at any given time journalists as a whole will have mixed abilities in any one field. It seems to me to expect that journalists all over American will have consistent expertise about railroading or any other subject is unrealistic. John
Henry,
Isn't the issue here the fact that people who become journalists do so because they have the ability to write well? Their education is focused on the craft of writing rather than on any particular subject matter. Therefore they originally approach any subject as a learner.
Over time a journalist may come to know one or more subjects and his or her ability to understand and report them will improve. Some become real experts in a field. But at any given time journalists as a whole will have mixed abilities in any one field. It seems to me to expect that journalists all over American will have consistent expertise about railroading or any other subject is unrealistic.
John
Victrola1 An old reporter long dead scoffed at schools of Journalism. He said any wishing to be a reporter should get a good liberal arts education. The emphasis should be on English, History and Politics with exposure to the Sciences. The old reporter claimed he could teach the basics of writing a news story to any competent graduate in six weeks. The old reporter did not just hang out in the same bar with his cohorts from the office. He made it a point to know a wide variety of people in the city he covered. Butchers, bakers, bankers, brakemen, etc. he developed a list of contacts he could use as a resource when needed to write a story. The old reporter worked at the same paper for years. He was an anchor of his news room. He is now long dead. News rooms now, especially in small markets, often lack such a veteran. Reporters come and go. The pay is low. Some move up. Many go into higher paying fields. Students cost even less than low paid reporters. Many small market media outlets over utilize "J" school interns. These students are clueless about the area they are covering. Editors with a fraction of the old reporter's knowledge do not catch the errors of interns and green reporters as they should. The old reporter was not out to save the world. He kept he kept his facts and his aim straight. The world was better informed when he covered an assignment. He is sorely missed.
About as accurate an assessment of the status of journalism as any I've seen or heard. 100% in fact!
Victrola,
I've never worked as a journalist. However, I worked at one job for almost 40 years and I came to believe that experience is not valued enough in our society.
Over those years I worked with many new people. If being inexperienced is a fault they had that fault; they were new to their job. But I found them in general to be energetic, careful and willing to learn. I was happy to work with them.
Frankly, every barrel has its bad apple. Some bad apples are new to the job; some are old veterans. And I have to agree with Schlimm about nostalgia.
One of those "old heads" (who handled police and fire, mostly) just retired from our local daily. He knew the people and we knew him. And I don't ever recall an incident of bias from him.
The "new kids" phenomenon is very obvious in the small-market broadcast world, where one tends to see the faces or hear the voices. Many are just passing through on their way to bigger and better things. I think we sometimes get some who are associated with the nearby military base (dependents), so their tenure is necessarily limited to just a few years.
As I've mentioned in other threads, we have the same problem in the fire service - reporters with no clue as to how we do our job. At least one FD that I know of has run "mini-academies" to help the media (and others) understand how we operate.
Given that fires happen far more often than RR-related incidents, I don't know that a RR version would be all that useful, with the possible exception of an OLI course.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Very few are "passing through to bigger and better things" today unless they are really smart enough to buck the trend, think for themselves, are curious and intelligent enough to look beyond what is presented. Owners do no allow enough time for newbies to do the job we defined and created in the last Century. Some are their for the glory, others because it seem like easy work...and the owners take advantage of that by not demanding a professional journalistic job from them, not paying them enough to stick around, and not supervising and teaching to be better enough for them to stick around nor want to: you can make a buck fifty more down the street being something else.
I worked at the local daily newspaper for six months in between retiring from the U.S. Army and being hired as a Department of Defense civilian employee in 1986, and believe me, the run-of-the-mill newspaper employees and reporters are poorly paid and have little motivation to check the facts.
Sorry, but every time I hear or read about people going "on to bigger and better things", I am reminded of a stand-up comic (I think it may have been Don Adams of "Get Smart" fame) routine on the Ed Sullivan TV show. His routine was of a man making the welcoming speech to a new class at Major League Baseball's Umpire School. It concluded with:
"Those of you that pass this course will go on to bigger and better things, those that don't - - will become umpires."
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
tree68Many are just passing through on their way to bigger and better things.
That is a different group of people, individuals who work with you for a short time in order to get a credential. They are using the position as a stepping stone to get to where they want to be. Or where they think they want to be.
I don't want to comment on people who took a different path than I did as I really don't know how they ended up. But I did see a fair number pass through.
Yes indeed , as the story goes.The likes of Walter ,Edward R . and H.V.K. were the best of the best. For amusement I grin at Fox and HLN, oh and the great cutsey CNN fashion ladies.
I would hope no other trains were derailed during this post.
Y6bs evergreen in my mind
cacole I worked at the local daily newspaper for six months in between retiring from the U.S. Army and being hired as a Department of Defense civilian employee in 1986, and believe me, the run-of-the-mill newspaper employees and reporters are poorly paid and have little motivation to check the facts.
Same here. I was a sports writer for a small daily for six months back in 1981. I was paid $250/week gross. I took it because back then the economy was really bad; the town in which I worked was a mining town, and I was one of the few who had a job. Covering sports, I couldn't really stray too far from the truth. One of the perks was that I got to travel all over northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan to watch the hockey games, and I got to meet many of the up and coming NHL stars before they were big names. But eventually I had to quit... just couldn't afford to work there any longer.
Yes...sometimes there is more reward from a job than just the money....When I think of the people I've met or interviewed in politics, business and entertainment; , the places I've been able to get into, the circumstances I've gotten involved in, what I've seen and learned beyond the paychecks, has made it fun and well worthwhile...
I live in a small TV market. The kids the local "Nitwitness News" hires look like they are straight out of journalism school; apparently they are cheap to hire, and in some cases the TV station gets less than they pay for. They don't even go to the trouble to learn how to pronounce some of the town names in the area that have unique local pronunciations (Ochlocknee and Cairo, GA are the most often mangled). One young lady is as well suited to being on TV as I am to experimenting with nuclear physics - sounds like she was picking cotton yesterday, and is woefully ignorant about almost any subject. The weekend and latenight sports anchor seems like a nice guy, but I know more about football and baseball/softball than he does, and I'm not a fan. Looks like the kind of guy who spent all his free time while growing up in the library, and his sports reporting sounds like that too. Sometimes it is painful to watch, and frequently the newscast is an embarrassment for a state capital - AND THIS IS THE BEST NEWS OPERATION IN TOWN!!!
Exactly duplicating what is happening here in Binghamton, NY and markets around the country. Many of those young hands are actually interns and not graduates and last about a semester before disappearing. This is because the local station may offer them a position at minimum wage...which is ok on some levels but not offer security, benefits, nor an able person to guide and help them become better ( it used to be that way), I know, I never was an intern but was a neophyte mispronouncing names and misidentifying the local scene; but I had a news director or program director to guide me through and around my mistakes. Today's on air people are charactures of charactures and of themselves seeking what appears to be an easy career of looking pretty and smiling at the camera not knowing that there is a real world of journalism that takes work and skill and dedication and concentration. The two reasons Binghamton had some form of accuracy about railrioads in the media some 40 or more years ago was because it was a railroad town and many were close to and knew the media and second because I was reporting and was able to sort out the stories and terminology. SalFan, your final line about best news in town should read "best news operation nationally!".
Nostalgia for those golden days that never were nearly so wonderful then as they appear looking back 40+ years! A major reason why railroad reporting may be uninformed today is because to most people they seem to be a minor part of daily life. Try asking students in most communities outside the NEC about railroads. It might surprise you or even upset you to find their views are negative (block traffic, accidents, noisy) or that the railroads are just irrelevant.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
How do you pronounce Cairo in Georgia? Here in New Jersey I would pronounce it Ky-row.
Many states have a Cairo and thus there are as many pronunciations. There are other similar.situations. In Connecticut you pronounce the city by the sound, Grennich while in upstate NY near the Vermont Border the same spelling is pronounced Greenwhich.. And the lists go on.
Perhaps, Henry, you can fill us in on how to say Binghamton in Binghamton. "Bing-ham-ton?" "Bing-um-ton?" Or some other way?
Bing im ton. Bingemton. Binghamton. Bington. Bimmington. Bingo Town. the Parlor City. The Cigar City. Chenango Point. The Hampton without the P.
The little town of Cairo, Ohio, just north of Lima, is pronounced by locals so that you would think the name of the town is Carol. It always took me aback because I had grown up within ten miles of Carroll, Ohio, and was always surprised to hear it and wonder why they'd be talking about Carroll, more than 100 miles away.
Kay-ro, Georgia and Illinois.
Johnny
I usually go with Bing-m-ton.
Madrid, NY - Ma' drid. (like "yeah")
Chaumont, NY - Actually just the way the French say it - Shah moe'
Gananoque, ON - Gan an a' kway.
There are a lot of French and native American names around here...
Every now and then we'll get a newby that has problems, but they usually get corrected pretty quickly.
I vote for Bingo Town. Didn't Chenango make some of the china for the B&O's famous set?
Johnny,
I understand that in Illinois the general area around Cairo is called Egypt. Abe Lincoln spoke in Jonesville which is in Egypt.
Except for Binghamton I've never heard of those places. Binghamton always makes me think of Mr. Bingham in Pride and Prejudice.
Chenango is Upstate NY, Shenango is Ohio and pottery and china
OK Henry. I stand corrected about Chenango and Shenango.
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