Comments: All journalism is a kind of fiction.
They are all liars.
In one of his beautiful volumes of memoirs, H.L. Mencken describes an incident that took place on a wintry November morning, if I remember correctly, when he was a cub reporter on the Sun, and assigned to cover the waterfront.
It was an awful, bitter day. So he decided to sit it out in a tavern. Where he was soon joined by 4 or 5 other cub reporters, similarly assigned to cover the waterfront by the papers that employed them. Yes, there were 5 dailies in Baltimore in the closing decades of the 19th century.
Rather than go out into the cold and come up with a real news story, the cubs decided to make up a story amongst themselves, and soon settled on all of the details.
Mencken dutifully turned in his copy.
The next day, he was the recipient of unexpected praise. Good job, Mencken, his editor told him. I just checked your report with the stories in the other papers. Looks like this time, you got it right!
Posted by Punditarian at May 4, 2015 1:12 PM