Sifting The Runes

by digby

I’m not sure that Michael Kinsley would define his thesis exactly the same way I see the problem, but this is indisputably true:

Newspaper writing … is encrusted with conventions that don’t add to your understanding of the news. Newspaper writers are not to blame. These conventions are traditional, even mandatory.

He says reporters the problem is that reporters fail to get to the point. I think the problem is that they have to spend too much time hiding what the point is, which is a slightly different thing. Either way, I think we agree that part of the problem with journalism is that the story is often incomprehensible. I have written before that one is required to sift through journalistic runes to even vaguely understand what is actually going on. It’s become a translating specialty, in fact, and gave rise to the blogs, which employ people like me to read and synthesize the obscure conventions and tell readers what’s really going on. We wouldn’t even be necessary if journalism wasn’t written in insider code.

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