THE NEWS HACK'S CREED:
I know more than you.
I make lots more money than you.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm sexier than you.
I appear on TV all the time.
I work ten minutes a day.
I rule the universe.
I'm going to live forever.
You are an idiot.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 2:
A lie isn't a lie when it tells THE TRUTH.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 3:
I've come to realize that the looseness of the journalistic life, the seeming laxity of the newsroom, is an illusion. Yes, there's informality and there's humor, but beneath the surface lies something deadly serious. It is a code. Sometimes the code is not even written down, but it is deeply believed in. And, when violated, it is enforced with tribal ferocity.
--JOHN "OMERTA" CARROLL.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 4:
News isn't news when we don't report it.
PERMALINKS:
THE NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY
THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY
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I take as an article of faith that every workaday journalist who blossoms into the supreme editor of a publication demonstrates at some point an ability to write effectively—if not artfully. Unless they can write, how can they judge and edit their staff's copy?
And some would-be jernalism profs can't write either. We're sure Jack whizzed by the disagreement of "every" and "they." If he wanted to be non-sexist and not a dimbulb he could have written, "...all workaday reporters who blossom into supreme news editors demonstrate...." (We've replaced "journalists" as it has a "sanitation-engineer" reek.) Yes, this is just one klumpy piece of verbiage. But one such here and one such there and klumpy verbiage here and there and you're talking a sea of verbal molasses that makes people fume over reading news hacks even more than mere errors or omissions.
That this occurs in a piece about editing is a typical news-hack joke.