Press Idiocy Forges Bipartisan Consensus
Sunday, August 17th, 2008Sort of….
Tom Maguire has a few justified chuckles at the expense of some tested and ready practitioners of the august profession of journalism innumerate hacks at the Grey Lady. Clearly, the fourth estate would be better off if its members were required to undergo some basic quantitative training — not even necessarily anything involving actual computation or problem-solving, just enough to get a grasp of basic concepts — and the whole nation might be better off as a result as well. (At the very least, it would not be possible — to paraphrase a former Dean of Admissions at Yale — to shoot every reporter in the country, recruit pajamas-wearers to fill every, um, cancelled position, shoot all of them, and then recruit a third string journalistic corps with scant if any diminishing of the substantive quality of reporting.) That said, it’s sort of cute that Maguire thinks business school credentials would stand our press in markedly better stead. Sure, there are exceptional B-school grads; there are also exceptional J-school grads. And really now — has he met many Harvard MBAs? They’re supposed to be the best of the lot, and…let’s leave it at that. (more…)