Ignatius gets my vote for Weasel Wording, Press Division, 2006.
But then, so many talking heads, so many "commentators," so much professional bullshit and think-tank tripe to come yet, I may have to reconsider by Thanksgiving.

"Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn't create a debate on our own."

Apparently, we've never heard of an editor, an editorial page or an op ed piece.

Bernstein and Woodward were so damn unprofessional. Creating "debate" just because an impeachable offense had been committed. Just think. If Ignatius and Judy had been around, we'd still have Nixon to kick around.

Is the Stutts mascot the Fighting Tools?

So when some party hack thinks it, it's time to be a megaphone. But when millions of people are demonstrating, it's time to be a stern gatekeeper?

I'm beginning to think that one of the biggest problems is the change from journalism as a blue-collar trade to a white-collar profession.

At STUTTS, giving less than 100% is unacceptable. I personally always gave 100.3% with the help of sterioids. Of course I now have to live with the small 'nads, but its a sacrifice I'd make again with pleasure.

I'm beginning to think that one of the biggest problems is the change from journalism as a blue-collar trade to a white-collar profession.

:-( Sigh. I hope not, though I'm doing nothing to provide a counter example. I'm a little suspicious of that historical model in the first place. Even in the 19th century we had muckrakers from "genteel" families with Berkeley degrees, like Lincoln Steffens.

I do think that a large loan to pay back is a bad, bad thing. At Columbia someone--perhaps one of our professors?--said something about how you should always have enough "fuck you" money stored up, ready to quit. We were incredulous that he could even think this would still be possibility, knowing full well how much our loans were. "If we do the Fuck You thing, will Columbia forgive our loan? Probably not."

Since when the hell was journalism a blue collar profession? Was that the blue collar around Benjamin Franklin's neck? Or the blue collar around the necks of middle class pamphleteers prior to the French Revolution? Or are we talking about the blue collar around the necks of the rich London newspaper barons of the Restoration, circa 1690? Or how about the blue collar around Martin Luther's neck during the reformation?

Oh, pardon me, we must be talking about the blue collar around William Randolph Hearst's neck as he was starting wars in Cuba.

Can anyone tell me the name of a publication started by a blue-collar editor who didn't swiftly go out and buy new shirts?

That Stutts dude, Ignatius, can't differentiate between careerism and professionalism.

Apologies if my earlier post was imprecise. Here's what I mean.

In 1900, graduates of Harvard/Yale/Princeton--or McAllister's "Four Hundred," or however else you'd like to define America's governing elite--did NOT generally go into journalism. If they did, it was as owners; but even then they had to be prepared for their peers thinking it was NOCD ("not our class, dear"). Hearst was *rebelling* by doing what he did. Compare the background of somebody like Pulitzer.

Everything I've read suggested this only got more pronounced as you went down the masthead. Compare Harold Ross' background with David Remnick's. Ross looked at the elite from an outsider's perspective; Remnick doesn't.

Nowdays, it's likely that the people covering the White House are products of the same, or a very similar, culture as the people occupying the White House. That encourages them to be less oppositional than they should be. That's all I'm saying, and it's pretty obvious.

In 1850, or 1900, or even 1950, people from Skull and Bones were not newspaper reporters (or actors, or comedy writers, Jon!). Today they are, and that has changed how our mass culture views elites--they're no longer things to be viewed with suspicion, but things you might be able to sneak into if you snuggle up to the right people. That's GOT to be horrible for journalism, and it's different than top-down pressure.

two somewhat contradictory thoughts:

1). there were plenty of people predicting disaster before the Iraq War. Maybe we should all email examples of them to Mr. Ignatius?

2). unfortunately, Ignatius has a point that few Democrats and beltway insiders dared speak out strongly.

So maybe the thoughts aren't exactly contradictory -- we could email Ignatius the examples under the subject line "get out of Washington sometime!" (btw, going to Stutts for alumni reunions doesn't count as getting out of Washington).

I guess that there's a big difference in both quantity and average wealth/connectedness between the white-collar subset of "400" (or 4000 or 10,000 or whatever it is now) graduates of Stutts/harvard/yale/princeton and the total set of people who are "white collar." I kind of think of white collar as anyone who expects to work primarily in an office, with paper or data--from secretaries and clerks and tellers to executives. People who don't really need muscles for their job, or most of it. The starving writers of 19th century Britain--Dickens et al--were firmly white collar battling at the edges, trying to stay out of blue collar. (Think Of Human Bondage--he basically starves first to avoid becoming blue collar, but finally does.) I.e. white collar does not necessarily mean rich or even influential.

In general I'm wary of the (very frequent) bandying about of terms like white collar, blue collar, working class, elites, etc.. without some definitions to back them up. There are certain parameters at play here--income, wealth, childhood wealth, connectivity, education, ability to exert cultural influence, race, ethnicity, religion, gender and geography are the ones that come to mind. If you plotted all those out in a histogram in, er, 12 dimensions, I'm sure you'd get some clusters, and I'm sure it would be easy to identify which clusters had more power than which other clusters. But I'm skeptical that they map anything more than very roughly to the way they are usually imagined.

Re: the lack of Democratic criticism before the war authorization--I often think that the only reason people can get away with saying that is that the short, loud, wonderful and dearly missed Paul Wellstone died just a couple weeks after casting his most excellent vote. It's truly frustrating how all his words died with him, so quickly. His death should have led to a firestorm of coverage and reexamination of his opinions--and would have provided the professionalism-bound journalists with a perfect newspeg for such analysis--but instead, he and his opinions simply disappeared.

The Harvard-Yale-Princeton "journalists" at the NYT, WaPost, New Yorker are not reporters. They are managers of their careers in journalism. They are not hungry, suspicious of anyone with power, cranky, skeptical...They are savvy in playing the game of office politics and handing out/returning favors.
Read a Chigao paper from the 1950s, and you'll find reporting. The boys and girls of today, they can be at the NYT or WaPost today, at a think tank or the Kennedy School tomorrow. The exceptions are few.

I dunno. I feel wary of classifying people just b/c of the SHYP label. I don't know that many people with undergraduate degrees from those schools, but I can think of at least one muckraking type a piece from Harvard and Yale, (cough, not to mention our esteemed host from Stutts.) I can also think of class A old boys clubbers who went to, say, Fresno State.

Sterioids make my skin break out, only when I quit taking them. Damn Brown Recluses. I hadn't thought about my nuts (no need in Wyoming)but I'll check em later since the condition's been mentioned.

No, Scruggs, he just confused journalism with Wikipedia. Turns out, journalistic rules actually encourage original research.

hf, I am anxious to derail this thread into bashing Wikipedia. How might we go about that? I know it's kind of stupid, but hey! Why not, eh? You only live once. Apposite, inapposite: it's relative.

Watch it, Scruggs. The ice is thin and I hear rumbling! *puts up his dukes*

Thank you, Saheli, for your identification of white collar. Saved me the trouble of doing it.

Alert alert to the sons of Stutts!

I don't know how many of you were in the Dim Dim Sum frat, but I was, and you know, so were Dusty Foggo,Buzzy Krongaard, and Porter Goss (http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004063.html) -- we were all brothers together, along with Donner, Blitzen, Winky and Nod. At that time I went by the nickname Beany, of course. Anyway, you have all heard the ugly news about Porter resigning, and the rumors about hookers. It is so untrue! As I remember, Dusty was just ace with the babes. So often, he and Buzzy and my roommate, Blinky, just happened to run into the most nubile showboats and bring them over and, well, you remember what a charmer Porter is --I still laugh about the time he wore that condom on his nose! They would fall for him, sometimes for 15 minutes, sometimes for a full 30 minutes at a stretch.

But nobody could doubt his patriotism.

Anyway, I'm very worried that this might smear the good Stutts name! So mums the word if some reporters come creeping around. Remember the Dim Dim Sum motto: sic semper bickus dickus.

Oh, I didn't mean to attack Wikipedia. Even if I saw no useful information there, I'd still praise it for teaching people to view encyclopedias as the work of humans. But a policy that makes sense for Wikipedia and its goals does not necessarily make sense for journalism and its goals.