JOE McGINNISS

I went to work for the Worcester Telegram in September, 1964.  I left nine months later because I got a job at the Philadelphia Bulletin.

But those nine months were not only the most enjoyable I ever had as a journalist, they were a crash course in ethics and professional responsibility

That’s why it particularly saddened me to learn today that back on Sept. 27, a columnist for the Worcester Telegram wrote the following:

The New York Times Company bought the Worcester Telegram in 1999, and my old paper has been a wholly owned subsidiary ever since.

Howie Kurtz, formerly of the Washington Post can call my book “unsubstantiated crap” on CNN without having read it, and Steve Roberts (aka Mr. Cokie Roberts), formerly of the New York Times can agree (also proudly proclaiming not to have read it), but that’s just Beltway b.s., which “insiders” have been spewing about me since THE SELLING OF THE PRESIDENT was published in 1969, because I actually went out and reported on a story that they were too busy scratching each other’s backs to pay attention to.

More than forty years later, nothing has changed. Sarah Palin is simply the latest and most egregious beneficiary of Beltway/MSM unwillingness to go out into America and ask questions.

Why haven’t they done so?

Because for these talking heads, it’s much easier to stay home and spout answers.

Opinions are cheap. Reporting costs money. Thus, the rise of point-of-view blogs, such as Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, Slate and Salon, which practice precious little journalism, but which fatten themselves from feeding on the corpses of those actual journalistic entities whom they are so eager to replace. Cleverness will trump conscientiousness every time, at least for the short term. Profit is produced by “eyeballs,” not sustained consideration.

I understand this 21st century reality as well as anyone.

Technology advancing at warp speed is enabling the visual image to replace the written word as the basic unit of communication.

And I wouldn’t argue that this is a cultural setback: it’s all part of the process of evolution, whatever it is we are evolving towards.

But when a columnist from my alma mater–the Worcester Telegram–trashes THE ROGUE while proclaiming that she hasn’t read it, “and probably won’t,” well, that hurts.

Not so much because she denigrates my work and me without having bothered to read my book, but because to see this sort of abdication of responsility appear in the Worcester Telegram is an affront to the memory of Frank Murphy, Al Marcello, Bill McNamee, Bob Foster, Ray La Roque, Bob Scarborough, Tom Brennan, Marnie Brennan, Terri Lord, Blair Norton, Barbara Norton, Bill Kingsbury, Bill Davis, Al Bartkevicius, Kay Bartlett, Jack Tubert, Frank Wakeen, Roy Mumpton, Paul Johnson, and so many others who taught me what it meant–and should always mean–to be a newspaperman or newspaperwoman.

Lesson One: Don’t write what you don’t know.

Lesson Two: If you do, pretend you didn’t, hope your mistake goes unnoticed, and for God’s sake don’t brag about it.

Yet here we have Dianne Williamson crowing from the rooftop that she hasn’t read THE ROGUE, and doesn’t plan to, yet being permitted by her editors to express an opinion about it.

And people wonder why newspapers don’t matter any more?