Dolts Collide

As thousands of regular readers will know, our gracious host, Drunka, keeps us well informed of the silliness of the Rocky Mountain News – recall his most recent post on the “blossoming” of Rocky Mountain in-house “blogs”.

The latest from Rocky Mountain News editor John Temple proves that he is a complete dolt, and so too is the PCmag.com columnist he attempts to critique, John C. Dvorak.

Temple is overly anxious to convey a picture of laughter and frivolity filling his news room, yet fails entirely to pick up on the single matter of importance and stupidity in the piece by Dvorak.

Neither man has the slightest inkling of the meaning of the word disinterested.

Neither man is even the slightest bit familiar with the role of journalism.

Neither of them understands the words of Joseph Pulitzer:

"Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery."

Dvorak seems to dismiss Pulitzer as being the guilty party in promoting “boring journalism”. In his blatant and appalling ignorance, Dvorak writes:

“The problem is the word "disinterested." It's the hallmark of journalism today and translates to bored and boring. Besides not giving a hoot about the story, the disinterested observer is often hoodwinked and subject to public-relations manipulations. Apparently, nobody sees this as a problem.”

On the contrary, we all know that one of the greatest problems with journalism today is that it is all but bereft of indifference and there is precious little, if any, reporting. We are flooded with commentary and trivia and we are awash with personal opinions, with journalists all too often placing themselves and their boring tee-wee thoughts at the centre of everything they write. To wit: the example written by Dvorak.

Editor John Temple makes no mention of any of this in his post critiquing Dvorak. Perhaps it by-passed his brain while he was having an hilarious time in an editorial meeting. I think it's called letting vanity get in the way of intellect.

It would seem that neither man is sufficiently educated to hold their current jobs, let alone suitable people to be commenting on anything within the realm of journalism.

Journalism: A collection of facts with no analysis or opinion.

Disinterested: Free of bias and self-interest; impartial. Having no stake in an outcome.

And that ladies and gentleman is what’s wrong with journalism today, and that is what’s wrong with both Temple and Dvorak: dolts together, blinded by vanity.