NYT Journalist: When I Was Hired Out of NYU Journalism School, I Didn't Know What An Editorial Was

The higher education bubble and the low state of the MSM combine in a facepalm-worthy twofer spotted by John Nolte at Big Journalism:

Racially-obsessed Daisy Hernández published an 8,000-word excerpt of her racially-obsessed memoir in the racially-obsessed Salon. In the excerpt, Hernández admits that at age 25, while taking graduate-level journalism classes at no less than New York University, she had absolutely no idea what a newspaper editorial was.

* * * * * * *

Incredibly, despite the fact that she had no idea what an editorial was, Hernández got the job:

Oye, and just like that I send my resume, which now includes research on indigenous maxi pads, to the editor at the Times hiring interns, even though I have no idea what an editorial is. That’s right. I am twenty-five, I am writing for a national magazine, I have been in journalism school, and I do not know what an editorial is.

I want to say that it’s never come up, that no one has ever talked to me about editorials. But they probably did, and I didn’t know what it was, and as I’ve been doing since I was in kindergarten, I probably acted like I knew what they were talking about and promptly forgot it.

How any American can make it to age 25 without knowing what an newspaper editorial is, is shocking enough. In the case of Hernández, journalism was her chosen profession, and she was taking graduate-level classes on the subject at one of the world’s elite journalism schools.

As John writes, “Hernández’ breathtaking ignorance says as much about NYU and the New York Times as it does her.” Perhaps she can collaborate on columns with fellow Timespeople Kate Zernike, Michael Barbaro, and Bill Keller, as they discover who Friedrich Hayek and Shylock were, and that Catholicism and Lutheranism aren’t “fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity.”

In 2001, Howell Raines, then editor of the New York Times, admitted, in a classic Freudian slip, that sex and skin color trumped the quality of the Times’ product:

In a speech before the National Association of Black Journalists in 2001, Raines specifically cited [Jayson] Blair as his star example of a hiring campaign that “has made our staff better and, more importantly, more diverse.”

Somewhere though just offstage, Mencken is alternately weeping with tears and gushing gales of laughter over the current standard of the MSM, and the gray lady in particular.

Or perhaps he’s simply given up on the newspaper world entirely and raising his hands in protest of Ferguson.