• min Online, Thursday, April 20, 2006 11:09 AM

Veteran journalist Phil Hall sits down at his computer and tries to explain why there are so few talented journalists coming down the pike. In a piece titled "Where Have All the Good Young Writers Gone," Hall takes aim at pitifully low salaries and the ineptitude of college-level journalism schools, but saves his best shot for the blogosphere.  Hall: "The Internet is crippling journalism. Today's young writers often migrate to the real world of journalism via the blogosphere. Blogging, with its hit-and-run approach to relating a story, makes the oft-maligned USA Today approach to reporting look like the Times of London by comparison. But as Truman Capote once observed: 'That's not writing, that's typing.' The typical blogger will make a point in three-to-four sentences, but if you put that blogger behind a keyboard and request a 1,000-word article, there is a good chance that individual [will] break into a cold sweat. Quality writing requires discipline, which is something blogging does not instill."  It's an interesting point and one widely shared among journalists who trained in the pre-Internet era.

Read the whole story at min Online »