Required Reading

Jack Shafer imagines what an old-school rewrite guy would have said to Howard Kurtz about his story on journalists making campaign contributions:

Look, kid, I know you got a big scoop here, but the story isn’t journalists’ reluctance to give money to politicians, and it ain’t the fact that media company policies vary, as you put it in your hed and subhed. The real story is that most of the media people you nabbed in your database dragnet gave to Democrats! And that the overwhelming majority of the guilty are reporters! Doncha see? Let me write you a lede that says something meaningful, like, “A Washington Post survey of campaign donations indicates that when reporters make campaign donations, they’re more likely to give to Democrats.” From there the story writes itself. Put in a call to Bozell over at the Media Research Council so he can gloat, and call that Alterman guy, who’ll say something like, “This doesn’t prove the press corps is left; it proves that they’re Democratic centrists