This reminds me of something I’ve thought a lot in the past few years. That the idea of teaching someone how to communicate involves a kind of hubris that contradicts the premise of reporting. Our J-schools and elite centers of education inculcate pride, a sense of being better, smarter, and more wise than those you claim to be serving.
We still manage to produce some terrific writers, but I suspect they are born, not made. The best ones have a gift and a drive to understand what’s going on and pass it on to others.
I think Cathy Seipp is a wonderful writer because of her humility and honesty and her gift of spotting the real issues and pointing them out cogently and with spareness and clarity.
I don’t really care for people like those who keep writing disdainfully about bloggers, as though they are all the same. I suspect that they resort to invective to cover their own insecurity. They secretly think that blogs are a threat to their livelihood. The real threat to them is their own arrogance, because readers aren’t all as dumb as they think.
