Journalism as blog, blog as journalism

Along with the slow death of newspapering as we know it, we get confirmation that in the eyes of the world (or the Daily Beast) there is no more useless piece of academic paper than our BAs in journalism.

When I was in j-school, we knew we wouldn’t get rich out there – we knew, at least, that we’d probably make more than teachers. Just about all of us got a job in the field, if we wanted one.

Reporting and writing, if you could get hired, was fun – is still fun – and newsrooms were the best working environment in the known universe, and maybe still are, if you can find one with any people in it. Buttondowns and jocks, cynics and misanthropes, drinkers and gamblers and mumbling insomniacs found common cause there, and the only family they knew, lots of times.

The newsrooms I know best are tombs now, for various reasons, and the industry, if you poked it with a stick, would stir, but faintly.

Now, the Beast suggests, the current crop of journalism grads is learning how to say, “Want fries with that?” Which I’m pretty sure is code for, “At least I can blog.”

As for me, I left daily journalism more than 20 years ago. I went to the dark side, and I married a teacher. I freelance for a newspaper. And I blog. About golf.

I wrote elsewhere, a couple years back, that if I’m gonna have my head in the sand about world politics (poisonous) and global climate (catastrophic), it might as well be in a greenside bunker.

A lot of good journalists lost their jobs, which presumably means they have time to play golf, if they can afford it. And, they can blog. About golf, if they have a mind to.

There are some good golf blogs out there. Try http://weiunderpar, by Stephanie Wei. Or http://golfchops.com. Or Golfdom Daily (http://www.golfdom.blogspot.com/).

I have no idea if any of the proprietors of those sites has a journalism diploma.

And it doesn’t really matter, does it? There’s no more worthless piece of paper.