In 2000, writing a new preface for a reissue of her autobiography, Georgie Anne Geyer said young people would ask her how she prepared for her interviews. “I have to tell them that the way you control your interviews (or any other part of your work) is to know more about the subject than the other person does,” she wrote. “This advice, as you can well imagine, is seldom greeted with deafening applause.” Indeed, you’d be hard-pressed to find a reporter or pundit today able to demonstrate knowledge of anything but their own self-angst.

Yet somehow, these journalists have weaseled their way into positions of status. Their debutante is the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, better known as Nerd Prom. Reading descriptions of the event, you’d think these journalists have to spend their days running from the paparazzi. Here’s Vanity Fair’s take: “Tamara Keith, who serves as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, acknowledges that most people tune in for the red-carpet celebrity spotting and the evening’s entertainment. …

The profile of Keith in Vanity Fair gives a clue as to why the Fourth Estate has become so dull.

[I’d say it’s when the journalist model went from reporting the news to promoting the preferred narratives. They became stenographers for the Left, and then they became censors and enforcers for the Left, too. They have become as boring and predictable as bureaucrats, which is basically what they are. — Ed]