Posted
2:23 PM
by Gene
I see I have used the term "news hacks" about twenty times. I'm not calling them "journalists." That's like calling a garbageman a sanitation engineer (God knows they're in the same business). Besides, am I going to endow
an AP drone with the same term as Boswell, Dickens, Hemingway and Orwell? Not on your life! Well how about "reporter," then? Because not all news hacks report; some are
incoherent columnists, some are
movie-ad-blurb copywriters, some are
senior-citizen groupies, some are
millionaire toadies, and so forth. No, the dictionary defines "news" as "new information of any kind" (never mind that most "news" writing is old as the hilburns), and "hack" as "a writer hired to produce routine or commercial writing." Hackwork is worse on a deadline. Hence -- NEWS HACKS.