So Much to Write; So Little Time!

Yikes! A whole week since my last posting. In part, it's due to being swamped with work. In part, it's due to a long family weekend. I'll try to get caught up.

But I just had to share this very moving posting by investigative reporter Murray Waas. It's long, but well worth the read. It covers a lot of ground about how things come back to bite us, how some things that bite us never leave us, and how we discover what's really important. It covers war, reporting, lawsuits, and cancer. Read it.

Toward the end, he talks about how a number of his experiences have coalesced into his view of his job, investigative journalism. Although he doesn't use the term "lapdogs," he does reference the fact that many in his profession don't seem to realize how important their work is to the rest of us: Journalism isn't for journalists, it's for us:

One of the major problems with journalism today is that too many reporters care more about their constituencies, rather than their readers or their mission. We write for our peers and prize committees. We serve at the pleasure of corporate boards and stockholders. We are too often afraid to stray too far from the conventional wisdom.

[Thanks to Barbara O'Brien of The Mahablog for linking to this excellent piece.]