Politics

The horse is dead, and I feel no need to beat it. Where I do take issue is this:

Journalist Mehdi Hasan responded to the report about Weiss by tweeting: “RIP CBS News.” Paul Farhi, a former media reporter at the Washington Post, said: “She’s an opinion journalist and always has been, and that’s not the person you want running a news division or having a prominent role in the news division. You want someone who actually knows or upholds the tradition of straight-up reporting that CBS has stood for its entire existence.”

Look, I realize it's a limited number of users familiar with my background -- why should you care?

But I started as a columnist, moved on to opinion editor, and if my standards for U.S. News suggest anything, it's that you want "opinion journalists" to keep things in line.

Where city/news editors often fail is not realizing that a conclusion being reached isn't backed up by data. Going into the reasons why would take a full research paper, but it's never been intentional. It's the cycle and amount of time, combined with what's now the limited experience of reporters and the demise of the desk.

Running opinion makes abundantly clear with is straight fact and what isn't. Running news? Less so. These are editors used to promoting "analysis" to prime real estate.

I've only pulled this card once (thankfully, I was already managing ed, and Lisa wasn't going to overrule me), recasting opinion as analysis (it realistically was, being a tale of my experience at a startup as the dot-com bubble imploded in 2000) and throwing it out front.

You can't excel in any field if you've not first learned what each part does.