A minor sidenote on the sad Carter Albrecht story: Was just adding the video from CBS 11 who went to the impromptu wake at the Barley House last night. And their "man on the street" commentary was from Adam McGill of D Magazine / Dallas CEO.
Nothing wrong with that, per se, but it seemed disingenuous to me not to note to whom they were talking. On the other hand, I'm sure Adam wasn't there in any official capacity, but rather as a friend and/or fan.
Is it worth noting that a journalist is interviewing another journalist as a "man on the street?" Or maybe in the age where everyone is a "citizen journalist," we've reached the point where journalists can just be people again.
Comments
jamiee79 Anonymous
Do journalists really want to be "just people" on a regular basis? Or just when their personal life crosses into other journalists' territory? Perhaps they'll find being "just people" overrated.
1 year, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
jefmelch Anonymous
When Judith Miller was in jail for refusing to reveal that Richard Armitige had revealed Valarie Plame's CIA job to her -- in connection with Joe Wilson's New York Times editorial, there was a story going around. It claimed -- more as an illustrative parable than fact, I think -- that the NY Times policy on the professional responsiblities of journalist were such that a Time theater critic walking home from the play and eyewitness to a mugging should not, ethically, describe the perp to the cops. It would be okay for the critic to WRITE about the mugging , but not to "reveal his source" to government authority.
Again, illustration; not policy. But that such an extreme self-image of a journalist's unique specialness should be held in mind when deciding whether to consider them un-special.
1 year, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Rawlins Gilliland Verified
Actually, I ran into this dichotomy myself when I was interviewed by DMNews Metro columnist James Ragland about my work with At-Risk teens in relation to the incident last year at Lake Highland High...the marijuana brownie case. I was not talking as a media person, but rather, as a once teen who had spiked the brownies at my North Dallas High with Ex-Lax thinking (as only a teenage boy would) that was funny. The librarian ran to emergency. Literally. My point was, of course, that kids make dumb mistakes, but in today's climate, I would have been prosecuted and have a criminal record, etc.
In any case, I learned then that DMN columnists do not read their own paper because I have had myriad high profile placement Op-Ed columns featured in the News maybe a dozen times in the last couple years. Plus my 7 yr. stint for KERA. So I sorta thought as an erstwhile ‘hands-on-the-pulse’ newspaper columnist that he’d have some idea up front that I was not some totally anonymous dude who watched ‘Married With Children’ re-runs in rural Van Zandt county. Bottom line. It looked strange when Ragland referred to me in his column only as ' a Dallas man who works with first offender teens ', etc. without any regard to my own tangent media affiliation.
Clearly I was not representing anyone for whom I write, anymore than Adam McGill was there at Carter’s wake on behalf of 'D' and its other magazines for which he writes. But the question you pose, Mike is a good one, but............file it under man on the street coincidence because at some point, we are all just a 'Joe' being someplace covered by some media guy who has zero idea you or I have any media connection whatsoever. Like leaving The Granada Theater running into Avi Adelman doing a video about people leaving Snuffers who eat cheese fries and then pass gas on Lower Greenville.
1 year, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Post a comment
(Requires free PegasusNews.com account.)