What's on your mind these days? J-school (worth every last penny of the $30,000 you paid or completely useless?), the realities of fact-checking, the half-life of print, and grammar-related pet peeves—lots of grammar-related pet peeves.

Regarding "If Your Journalism School Says It Knows What's Best for You, Check It Out" by Greg Lindsay:

Greg Lindsay's open letter to j-school graduates of 2005 and his notes on Bourdieu struck a chord with this j-school graduate from the University of Southern California.

I myself had several professors who loved to start the first class of each semester with a long-winded speech on their own press credentials and how they worked hard to get where they were:

"I started out at my high school paper. Then I was editor of my college paper. I toiled away at a little-known daily in Ohio (or Wisconsin or Washington) for 10 years before becoming a reporter at the LA Times (or the New York Times or the Washington Post)…." Blah blah blah.

Yes, there were several times when I felt that I would have to end up in Kansas or Nebraska in order to get a solid reporting job. Yes, there were several times when I felt that journalism was a club of which I would never be a member. (One time, a well-known freelancer came to a class of mine as a guest lecturer and told us that we would never be as successful as him at freelancing. And that if we didn't want to hear that, then we should drop out. How's that for morale?)

Well, one year out of j-school I have probably done exactly what Lindsay would recommend. I decided to tough it out in the Los Angeles media. I interned at a daily paper for a summer. I interned at a trade publication for the next four months. I now freelance for other area papers, write for a blog or two, and sometimes fill-in for a wire service. It's not a full-time staff job, but I'm happy. I write different stories from health to crime and I run my own schedule.

But I can't agree with Lindsay's statement to abandon j-school altogether. See, I earned my master's in print journalism from USC. That means that I didn't come out of college fresh-faced ready to start in the journalism field. I had already spent two years in NYC in another media field, book publishing. I knew I wanted to be a reporter but I had a lot of catching up to do. J-school made it possible for me to be where I am today. I always say it helped put me on the "fast-track" to a job in journalism.

People look at my resume and they are impressed with the journalism school degree. They can trust me to write and report. But most importantly, aside from learning the skills and tools of a writer, I was allowed to make mistakes in j-school that aren't allowed in the real world--like the time when I wrote a story about a school board candidate and didn't interview the opposition. Or the time when I had wrong statistics listed in my article. And all the little things, like not getting an assignment handed in on time, to spelling errors and bad grammar.

Making the mistakes then, made me sure I would never do it again. It was scary enough in j-school to hear the wrath of a professor, and it had to be worse in the real world from an editor (indeed it is.)

My curriculum at USC also allowed me to do web design, layout design and production and take electives on "niche" journalism, like writing about prisons and criminal justice. Some professors were great about hooking us up with editors, internships, part-time jobs. Some weren't. Almost always, those hiring were looking for writers with a little more experience, which I still feel today.

When I do get frustrated today about not having a full-time job, it's usually because I need more experience, which at 26, I probably do. And the other times, it's because of competition. Journalism is a highly competitive field (duh) and there aren't enough jobs for all the reporters who want to be in top markets. Age and experience do play a role. The more stories you have covered, the more you know what you are doing. Entitlement, while a hopeful word that suggests "get rich while doing nothing," it will never really work in this field.

And even though I'm taking a haphazard course in this field, I have to say that when I'm 45 and an editor somewhere (hopefully) I don't think I would let some 26-year-old come in and take my job. It's obvious the media world is changing. It's happening right now and where it will end up no one can really predict. Still, I truly think at j-school education can make a person stand out.

Whether or not they choose to listen to their professors wax poetically about "paying dues" or decide instead to tear down the establishment, j-school students should be focusing on the skills they can learn. That's what the school is for.

Juliana Shallcross

I just read Greg Lindsay's address and as a blossoming freelance writer in Brooklyn, I must say it was refreshing and inspiring. I didn't go to j-school, nor do I intend to. I think that the sense of entitlement is what drove me to pursue a career in computers then disgusted me enough to alter my path. I've enjoyed more success and fulfillment writing for myself and anyone who'll post my stuff than anything else I could've done. The address reminds me that there are still people who reject the status quo and all the bullshit and complacency that comes along with bottom feeding socialites. I thought that after Hunter Thompson died there wasn't any hope, that we didn't have anyone to lead with example. I suppose I was wrong. With me, it was never about a paycheck, and it shouldn't be. I just want to be one of the few honest voices left. To speak without agenda or at least make my biases clear and damn the consequences and ruffled feathers. I can relate to Mr. Lindsay and I can't do that with very many people. I hope he keeps on fighting the good fight, I'll promise to do the same. Thanks for posting the article.

Mike Spitalieri

An open letter to the editors of Mediabistro.com: was Greg Lindsay's condescending rant about j-school really worth 2,000 words?

Lindsay seems to have missed one of the cardinal rules of journalism: be concise. Being accurate couldn't hurt, either. I'm in the graduate program at NYU. At least one professor, Jay Rosen, has his own blog. In my magazine writing class this semester, each person in my class kept a blog and updated it three times a week. (You can read our blog at journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/theoryb.) Each week, a professional journalist spoke to our 10-person class, because our professor, Adam Penenberg, is quite aware that "It's who you know, not what you know."

I don't know when Lindsay graduated from j-school, but I think he's been saving up this rambling, rudderless rant ever since. The essay wanders from French philosophers to Spy magazine to some poor undergraduate intern who got beat up on Romanesko. [sic] (Yes, Mr. Lindsay, I do read Romanesko.) But he doesn't make any clear point other than "rebellion is fun." Next time, if he wants to write about what's going on in journalism schools, maybe he should try some actual reporting first.

Hannah Clark

Excellent points, Liz. I also think it's important to remind readers that in the print world, "fact checking" is strictly the domain of magazines, not newspapers or books. I have written many articles for the NYT Arts and Leisure section, and none has ever been fact-checked. As the former Executive Editor of Variety and Daily Variety, I can confirm that fact-checking is simply not in the budget of newspapers, large or small. The reporters are trusted to get the facts straight--which is what leads to Jayson Blair, et al. Likewise, no book I have ever written or edited (including George Plimpton's last) has ever been fact-checked. Again, not in the budget.

Meanwhile, fact-checkers at magazines like People (where I was a Senior Editor) tend to obsess over minutiae at the expense of the big picture--leading to stories that can't be factually "challenged" ("Julia Roberts had twins") but that exist in an overall factual void ("Julia Roberts is important").

Mainstream "journalistic standards," besides being utterly non-standard, have very little to do with journalism, which at its root simply means keeping a journal. What standards might apply to keeping a journal? Well, if I were teaching a class of high schoolers on journal-keeping, I would instruct them to observe carefully and record honestly. Beyond that, "standards" are mostly about protecting the status quo.

Max Alexander
author of "Man Bites Log"

Regarding "The Internet Tail Will Come to Wag the Magazine Dog" by Jesse Kornbluth:

The sudden flurry of columns and commentary since Rupert Murdoch's dire warning that print is passé sounds an awful lot like the great "new economy" gas cloud of the early 1990's. And we know where that went. Perhaps Jesse Kornbluth, whose words I've been reading for quite a long time, has decided he will be happier in his dotage writing short spurts than long analytical pieces. I look forward to my weeklies and monthlies, not to mention my daily newspaper, despite reading online content, and writing it as well. Goodbye paper? I think not.

Dan Cooper

I agree with Kornbluth that news weeklies are in trouble and probably soon to be irrelevant, and that much of the content in magazines like Vanity Fair and The New York Times Magazine is not best handled by print, but what about magazines that run longer investigative journalism, or serious profiles that are not PR pitches? Like The New Yorker, Atlantic, Harpers, etc.? Or even the better pieces in the NY Times Mag? Are those too doomed? Is Kornbluth proposing death to print just because there's another delivery mechanism, or is he proposing that timely information is better fed to us via the Internet?

And that rolling-off of the Gawker numbers reads a little like the celeb profile he's poo-pooing, since it's the stock info off Gawker.com.

Quibble aside, good shit from Mr. Kornbluth.

Chris Gage

Regarding "The Atlantic and the Decline of the Short Story" by Quinn Dalton:

I've subscribed to The Atlantic and The New Yorker for many years (I'm not young). I may read one or two very timely articles first, but it's the short stories I most look forward to, and have, since I began devouring magazine fiction as a teenager. I'm seriously considering giving up my subscription to The Atlantic, partly in protest and because I can usually get the information in the articles elsewhere. In fiction, it's the language, the explorations of the complexities of lives that keeps me in touch with a world that I am now only marginally a part of. One or two issues a year with fiction doesn't do it for me. I need my weekly and/or monthly fix.

I suppose they won't listen to an old lady, but perhaps they should remember that there are going to be many more of us ancient ones in coming years.

Alma Edmonds

Regarding "The Incredible Shrinking News Cycle" by Elizabeth Spiers:

Your column crystalized a thought for me that has been taking shape for a while. People -- like you -- confuse the news media with what real people are thinking and feeling and remembering.

I'm 58, and when I was a kid, the newspapers generally did reflect what Americans were thinking and feeling. Or at least, I believed they did. Maybe they actually did because they started stories, they followed stories, and they ended stories. They followed more than one story at a time. And they didn't forget from one year or decade to the next what had happened with a particular story last time.

Today, none of that is true, for the most part. The newspapers have become the mass media, and they are all in hot pursuit of the biggest possible audiences. So, yes, they are all about Terri Schiavo, and the next week they are all about the Pope. And for whatever reason -- youngsters on a story who actually don't remember it ever happening before, or greater pressure to publish so there's no time to do any research into a story's background, or sheer laziness and sloth so it's just easier to rewrite the press release than to do any digging -- they're pretty shallow and think "he said /she said" is balanced reporting and rarely convey any in-depth understanding of the story. And worse.

But that's not what's going on out here in America. Sure, half of America is under-educated and over-manipulated, and they believe we did find WMD in Iraq and that Iraq was supporting Al Qaeda. But the other half remembers that we made claims about Iraq that turned out not to be true, and that hardly anyone in the media raised a question about the lies the Administration was putting forward, and we remember that the US fought a war in Nicaragua once before and the Reagan administration lied about what was going on down there and what we were doing, and also lied about who were the bad guys and who were the good guys. We remember Terri even though the headlines are all about the Pope, and we connect the dots between a President who is beholden to Big Oil and $50+/barrel oil prices.

That's the main reason we rate journalists' credibility somewhere between that of a slug and a sociopath.

So don't make the mistake of thinking that just because the media are focused on something and are missing something else, that everyone in America is doing the same. It's like thinking that government broadcasts from a country undergoing civil war or a bloody coup accurately reflect the real situation. Those broadcasts simply represent the pipe-dreams of those who currently have control over the broadcasting stations.

Here in America, those of us with brains and with education are thinking and feeling and remembering with all our might. And we lament that our discussion is not being echoed and amplified in the national mass media. But that's not going to stop us from thinking and feeling and remembering.

You're making a big mistake if you think it does.

Robert Moskowitz

Regarding "Hopefully Not" by Jesse Kornbluth:

Although I am a stickler for some things (phrases like "laying in wait" and "died of an apparent heart attack" send me reeling) I must disagree with Kornbluth. Using since without reference to time is not an error. People have been doing it since the 15th century. And some of the best usage books say so.

Common usage sometimes dictates, and we must listen. We were once taught we couldn't end a sentence in a preposition, that starting a sentence with "but" was an egregious error, and that splitting an infinitive was the equivalent of throwing spit balls at the blackboard.

But all that changed. The language is a living thing, in constant flux. Its greatest asset is its flexibility. And it seems that even Kornbluth bends now and then.

If he really were the stickler he claims to be, he would use the masculine "he" as generic and all-encompassing, instead of using the late-19th-century concocted PC solution he/she.

Sometimes, you've got to listen to Norma Loquendi.

Kathleen E. Miller
Former Research and Editorial Assistant to William Safire
The New York Times Magazine, "On Language."

Since I'm a grammar teacher, I read Jesse Kornbluth's essay with great interest. The problem is he'd have us believe that the first sentence of this letter contains a grammar error. Go ahead. Find it. Chances are you won't, unless you believe his assertion that "since" cannot show causality. Really? That's certainly news to me. But don't take my word for it. Open up any dictionary and you'll see how mistaken Kornbluth actually is. (Yes, "since" is weaker than "because," but it still suggests reason.) Anyway, since I'm a nice guy, I won't hold it against him.

Arnie Cooper

Jesse Kornbluth's "Hopefully Not," elicited a flurry of follow up suggestions regarding proper grammar usage, so we asked you to send in your own grammar-related pet peeves. Here are a few of your responses:

I feel badly. One only feels badly if one's feeling mechanism is impaired. I feel bad about this incorrect use of the phrase.

Amy Huggins

Two favorites of mine:

#1. Alright. It's not all right.

#2. Latter by definition is the last of two. There is no such animal as the latter two. And in a listing of three or more, the final one is the last.

Curt Schleier

I am both a lawyer and an English teacher--the two last remaining professions in which words and their meanings matter. In general, I'm with you on the points you raise.

But not on "everyone/they." Sorry. What we mean when we say "everyone" is "all of the human population--several billion people. Who are, therefore, plural." Unfortunately, the structure of the English language turns "everyone" into "each member of the human population, taken one at a time. Singular." So why not replace "everyone" with "all of us", followed by plural formulations as needed? This works in several other languages, after all. And it gets us around the "he or she" problem, in the process.

Marian Neudel

I enjoyed Jesse's article too. More common errors below:

* "each other" and "one another" are not interchangeable. The former is used only when two people are involved, as in "My brother and I talk to each other at least once a week." The latter is used when it involves more than two people, as in "My brothers and I talk to one another at least once a week."

* "the reason why is because" is wrong and repetitive. It should be "the reason is that."

* "between" and "among" are not interchangeable. The former involves only two people, as in "I chose between Mediabistro and MediaMatters." The latter involves more than two, as in "I chose among Mediabistro, MediaMatters, and Wonkette."

Biodun Iginla

Here's my pet peeve. The misplacement of the word "only" in a sentence is one of the most common errors I come across as an editor. As in "She only washed her hair on Sundays" (meaning, I take it, that she did not dye or curl it on Sundays), when the writer really meant that she washed her hair only on Sundays. Watch those slippery onlys!

Kim Waller

The Kornbluth piece on "hopefully" makes me hopeful. It's a good start. I'd like to see more on atrocities apparently sanctioned by the dictionaries, including the use of "reportedly" for "was reported" and "allegedly" for "was alleged."

I'm all for a changing language when it comes to extending the range and power of the language. But these two strike me as positive only in that they save a few picas. Otherwise, they gouge a hole in useful standards for understanding what an adverb is and does.

John T. Ward

Let us not, of course, forget about the mistakes involving "good" and "well." I once had a friend (who is a high school English teacher, unfortunately) end late-night phone conversations with "Sleep good!" What's next? Sending ill acquaintances "Get Good Soon" cards?

April Graham

Oy. The one that always irks me is improper use of the subjunctive. From an early age, my English teacher mother would correct misuse of the subjunctive by gently intoning: "hopes, wishes, and dreams always were." Now, thanks to her, phrases like "if I was" never fail to grate on me. Good old Tevye, he had it right: "If I were a rich man!" And if I were, could I pay everyone to use the subjunctive correctly?

I also can't help but be pleased by the recent trend in supermarket signage finally getting it right: "10 items or fewer." Mom always scolded the checkout girls * to no avail * about those signs that trumpeted "10 items or less."

Thanks for a great article. Contrary to what I expected of my adult life when I was a mere grade school child, struggling with tenses and diagramming sentences, I find myself now to be a true grammar freak! My mother would be proud. (She enjoyed the article as well * I couldn't resist forwarding it to her.)

Ilana Brownstein

What makes me reach for my proverbial blue pencil? It's the phrase "can't help but," as in "I can't help but love you," which logically means the opposite of what is intended; for what's stated is that I can't help myself from doing anything EXCEPT loving you.

Thanks for a great site!

Gerald Lebowitz

In reference to Mr. Kornbluth's article and all the responses:

Being of the generation born after 1980, I have to say that basic grammar is just not taught in schools nowadays. All my life I was placed in Honors and AP English classes, and each year the teacher would assume we had already learned proper grammar and not teach us a thing. Imagine our surprise when SATs rolled around!

I think the most horrific abuse of the English language is when people of my generation try to correct themselves. People have ingrained using "so-and-so and I..." so much that it is now used all the time, regardless of whether or not it is correct! The worst case is when "I" is used as an object pronoun!

Recently on a reality tv show (not that I personally watch it), one person on the show actually said, "So-and-so and I's relationship..."

When did I's become a possessive form???

UGGGHHHH!

Jen Honovic

The usage error I hate the most is "an" tagged with the word 'historical." No one uses "an" with "history professor" or "history book." No student would ever say, "I am taking an history class." Yet I hear "an historical event" or "an historical moment" or "an historical figure" nearly every month, on television and even (gasp) on NPR.

I first noticed this error when Ronald Reagan used it in a presidential address back in the 1980s.

Then about eight years ago, I was horrified when an editor at a national newspaper inserted this error into an article I wrote. She later defended her action by saying the H in historical was silent, as in "herbal." Yet if that were the case, "an" would precede all forms of "history."

JB McDaniel

As a young reporter, "under way" was beaten into my head by a toe-the-line editor. It's two words unless you're referring to a ship at sea. I see this term used incorrectly and my blood boils!

And, while I agree that some of the "rules" may be out-dated and that language should be an evolutionary process, I believe that we as professionals are doing readers (and listeners) a disservice when we use terms incorrectly or use sloppy grammar just because it's the common vernacular. Evolution should come from expansion, not ignorance.

Candy Goulette
Regional Editor, ADVANCE for Nurses

My own grammatical bête noire is the increasingly rampant use of danglers, especially by professional writers. "Perspiring heavily, the shirt was soon soaked through" is not only incorrect; it is positively surreal.

One cannot switch subjects within a single sentence, yet this seems to have become entirely acceptable today in magazines, newspapers and books.

Eric Myers
Author, Uncle Mame, The Life of Patrick Dennis, St. Martin's Press, 2000

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