Warren Hinckle and the Glory that was Ramparts

[Jim DiEugenio]

But here is the question I was posing, perhaps a little too subtly:

Why would the online generation want to mimic the MSM?

...

Ramparts did not do that and they succeeded. That is why I tried to hold them up as model of what real journalism was and can be. I really don't understand it.

Here's a completely unjustified opinion. Today's culture is fame-driven, not ideology driven like it was in the 60s. The people writing online are hoping to get a "better" (read: richer, more famous) gig at CNBC or Fox or CNN or even the print media. In other words, the online journalism is just a means to an end rather than a heartfelt protest or an appeal to a fuller debate, like Ramparts. They are parroting the type of journalism that they see either because they know no better (as Jim said, lack of an alternative role model), or in fact they DO know better but know how to "play the game".

For the people writing for Ramparts, the object of the journalism was protest. For the people writing online in the way Jim describes, its about compiling a professional portfolio of fawning crap. The journalistic equivalent of celery - i.e. bland with no calorific content.

Look at someone like Geraldo Rivera. Did he switch out of actual physical fear, occupational pragmatism or some other reason? I highly doubt that it was simply a change of his opinion on the topic.

This is something that I never really thought of. Probably because coming from where I do, that is writings on CTKA about the assassinations of the sixties, I have never even contemplated leapfrogging to a job at CNN. But there is probably some truth to that since I have seen some of these people on the MSM.

But then why start a new online journalism school if you are simply going to follow the people who brought us down the yellow brick road in the first place? I mean in addition to those terrible scandals I listed in my Hinckle piece, I left out all the signals about the 2007-08 economic crash that almost threw us into 1929 again.

Not my idea of what real journalism is all about. Well, blogging was always a cheap substitute for investigative reporting anyway. THe worst part of it, is that it snookered tens of thousands of commenters into thinking they were actually a part of a revolution.

Hillary Clinton is not my idea of a revolution. She is part of the problem. Her foreign policy is pretty much the neocon brand.