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Topic: Letters Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 12/11/2007 4:38:36 PM
Title: How about an under-30 journalism anthology?
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
From DAVID VON DREHLE, Time magazine: The blogosphere has plenty of people eager to argue about Perry Bacon's piece. I have nothing new to add, except to say that sometimes a piece doesn't land the way you intended, and anyone who doesn't know that knows nothing about the newspaper business.

I will say that I'm glad Hunter S. Thompson didn't consult with journalism
professor Chris Daly before he wrote, at age 27, his career-launching work on the Hell's Angels. And I'm glad Eric Blair didn't seek the professor's permission before writing "A Hanging" under the pen-name George Orwell at about the same age. Otherwise I would never have had a chance to read the first perfectly shaped journalistic essay I encountered in my career.

You could make a pretty good anthology out of the under-30 journalism of David Remnick, Michael Lewis, Malcolm Gladwell, Kate Boo, Mark Singer, Wil Haygood, Tom Friedman, Susan Faludi, Carl Hiaasen, Richard Ben Cramer -- you get the idea. Journalism is, to a large extent, a kid's game.

That's just as true of political journalism, where fresh eyes and tireless
legs can be a real plus. I'm aware of four classic book-length works of political reporting: Thompson's "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail," Cramer's "What It Takes," Joe McGinniss's "The Selling of the President 1968" and Tim Crouse's "Boys on the Bus." Two of the four were written by journalists under 27.

My ideal journalism professor would be a person who knows the capacity of young writers and fires them up, rather than one who draws arbitrary and unfounded limits on their potential. Whether a piece of journalism works or doesn't has nothing to do with the writer's age. [Permalink]

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