JR: The expertise, in this case, is criticism. It’s the exercise of **judgment and taste.**
HH: Joe, you’re 23.

perfect.

[from the description in his opinion column, I take it he reads mostly Koz, onFiredog, SadlyInsipid, et al. Though possibly I was missing his plentiful, deep and nuanced irony...]

HH: Joe, you’re 23.

JR: Sure.

HH: Can you be expert in anything? And I’m serious here.

JR: I think I can write a thoughtful article, even though I’m 23.

HH: That wasn’t…the question is, can you be expert in anything at 23?

JR: No, I don’t think so.

Can you be an expert in anything at 23, is what HH asked.

And yes, there are 23-year old J-school grads who are expert enough in certain fields that, in addition to their J-school training, makes them qualified to write about a field.

HH was right about the rest of his lines of questioning. It was that one, idiotic detour that I took issue with, and still do. Stupid. Turgid. Etcid.

P.S. I think I just compared North Korea to scurvy.

hillbillyjim on December 28, 2006 at 8:21 AM

Heh.

And scurvy everywhere is insulted by it.

Rago probably didn’t have anything better to do during the Xmas-thru-NewYear lull so they gave him a shot as writing something during the period not much news is happening. It just so happens that a blogger (HH) picked up on his story and called him on the carpet about it. Yeah, he probably does the gopher act in his job but he will ultimately be a a full blown journalist. Yes, he is young and he’s just spreading his wings but HH pointed out that he could expand his wings a bit farther by reading and researching a bit more than his narrow-minded perception took him.

The kid just needed someone to bring him off his lofty platform and HH did it gently and without humiliation. Print media is losing out to bloggers.

Rago – buck up, junior. It was just a lesson to be learned outside of college. I’ve given similar messages to my son.

Hewitt lived up to his reputation for turgidity on that one.

wordwarp on December 28, 2006 at 3:32 AM

Dude, name me all of the j-school, msm 23 year old experts on anything other than masturbation. We’re not talking about tennis and muscle cars…

This is why simple, easy-to-understand analyses have their (important) role. I would rather these folks have some basic understanding of the issues of the day than none, because a lot of these same people will be casting the votes upon which all of our future depends.

The world would go on without both fruits, but not very well (think scurvy). Likewise, life would keep on going without internet bloggers or newspapers, but certainly for the worse (think North Korea).

All do some of the same useful things, and all do some different useful, unique things. The world is definitely a better place with all four.

Newspapers and bloggers complement each other, though rarely compliment each other. So I guess technology has brought us an informational fruit salad. If you don’t like one particular fruit, don’t eat it.

HH’s systematic drubbing was a little overdone and unnecessary, but JR brought it upon himself.

P.S. I think I just compared North Korea to scurvy.

The point made by the blogs [Hugh mentioned] – either overtly or by contrast – isn’t that the institutional media is osbsolete, only that they are broken and need fixing. That Rago becomes the very case-in-point of that can’t have been intentional :-) – oops…

John, Jaibones et al are right on: Rago undermined his own potential point and proved ours instead (Hugh Hewitt notwithstanding, AP).

Let’s see: Welles made Citizen Kane at 24, and authored a book on how to stage Shakespeare at 19.

Most of the best software being written now is being written by “children” under 25.

Tiger Woods at 19. Ditto Federer. Probably plenty of gear-heads who are expert mechanics at 23.

And so on.

Hewitt lived up to his reputation for turgidity on that one.

Have you ever noticed that the longer the title, the further from power a person probably is?

Examples:

President - Mmmm…pretty cut and dry – very powerful

Secretary of State – Mmmm…Not exactly the most powerful, but still VERY close to the seat of power.

Assistant Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Planning – I would bet he doesn’t meet with the President all that much.

We use to always make jokes about it in the military.

And indeed the older I get (40 now) the more I get a kick out of young folks thinking they know it all and have the answer to all the world’s problems.

Following an opening interview with Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, I was joined in studio by Sgt. T.F. Boggs, back from his second year-long deployment to Iraq, and on his way back to Ohio University to finish the two quarters between him and……

I’m thinking the adjacent post on Professor Jeffrey Hart of Dartmouth tells us more about Joe Rago than anything else I’ve heard here.

Since self-promotion seems to be his primary aim, everything else is gravy, and subordinate to his desire for recognition. Speaking only for myself, that makes his work suspect, regardless of content, and immediately colors my judgement of his opinions. I would always find myself asking, “What’s Joe’s self-aggrandizing angle for this story?” From a journalistic standpoint, I find no impulse to take seriously someone who takes himself more seriously than his stories.

I get the impression that he sees himself as a standard bearer for the Old Media as against the encroachment of the New. But the blogosphere and traditional media should have nothing to fear from each other. Joe complains about the chaos of blogs, but that is always going to exist where humans have freedom. A freedom he gladly accepts for himself, but like all egomaniacs, disdains for the masses.

I would have gone for giving the impression that I am not triumphant about blogs and explicitly stating I would like to see institutional journalism revamped– because it has an important function.

Instead, he went on his anti-blog feeling, and wrote a screed that only implied what may have been his real point.

As for HH’s points– some of them were weak. But it doesn’t matter– HH shotgunned the kid. Some buck bounced off, but enough stuck to make a mark.

I think, its probably because HH has some time to fill, so he will throw in some repostes and weaker arguments to fill ‘er out if necessary, or to keep things interesting. Hewitt is pretty damn good overall, but he does have his weak punches.

That’s obvious: John McCain and Russ Feingold

I’m no good at reading between lines. Rago is stating flat out, against all evidence and logic, that the difference between the msm and blogs is the specific, credible expertise of the journalist.

Hewitt very reasonably demonstrates that this makes Rago’s piece invalid, by Rago’s own logic, since Rago at age 23 has zero expertise in the field of journalism and blogs. Judging from Rago’s apparent love of flowery language, he is more a critic of plain speakers than anything else.

And yet you take off after Hewitt for some reason that you haven’t made clear. Give us the three examples of 23 year old experts in the field of journalism that you must be thinking of to make this argument. Or is this some border war?

Both think that on important matters like politics especially near election time that any unlicensed printing press should be silent

That’s an incredibly scary suggestion. So who decides who’s political opinions should be heard? Who decides which political views to “silence?” The New York Times? Some political committee, made up of major media corporations? Columbia University?

Sounds similar to what’s going on in Iran right now.

Rago’s point was that the MSM’s culture of expertise produces a more useful, informative product than blog culture, not that every single thing that appears in the MSM — especially the op-ed page — does or should demonstrate expertise. What would blog “expertise” look like, anyway?

No doubt Rago has a more informed opinion about blogs than most editors, but the gist of his editorial was that an informed opinion is not sufficient reason to commit journalism.

At the risk of sounding like Joe Rago, I think you’re missing the irony. In essence, he offered a pompous, irony-free, specifics-deficient, “here’s my opinion right now” editorial bashing blogs for…well, doing the same things. I guess you could say he embraced the form.

His editorial was none of the things he argued were necessary for good journalism. There were no sources, no news value, and no layers of seasoned editorial wisdom. It’s that last bit that makes his age relevant. It was just one more way of demonstrating the complete hypocrisy of his piece, though I’d probably agree with you it was the weakest one.

Note to Google:

Will this do?

Apparently, both of us were incapable of checking with Google and finding out that a dictionary search button is already an option.

I don’t think a blogosphere advocate like Hewitt is saying that no one under 23 has ever had anything valuable to say. It’s Rago who in his original column brought up the issue of expertise, and the blogosphere’s lack of it.

Rago’s point was that the MSM’s culture of expertise produces a more useful, informative product than blog culture, not that every single thing that appears in the MSM — especially the op-ed page — does or should demonstrate expertise. What would blog “expertise” look like, anyway? Rago knew many of the blogs Hewitt mentioned; I’d bet he’s more blog savvy than most journalists. Certainly he knows enough of the big ones to make some sort of generalized judgment.

Note to Google:
I need a button on my Google tool bar that links to an online dictionary that, when clicked, links the currently highlighted word to the online dictionary, and requests a definition, and synonyms.

Will this do?