Journalism in the 21st Century

Whether you are 80 or 18, you're learning every day. People will say, too, that the world is your teacher, that experience carves character and life can provide lessons no classroom ever can. Yet, more and more I'm finding that my world is full of uneducated people, for whom life/experience and so forth haven't taught so much as proper grammar, a perspective on history or art appreciation, or the ability to count without a calculator. Saying "I didn't know nothing" is no longer the purview of backwoods characters on TV shows, but common language among the gum-smacking teenagers at shopping malls. Was I the only one who didn't fall asleep when the teacher taught us about double negatives? (Or for that matter, when my mom taught me how rude it was to smack gum in public?) The way forward is not only through experience, then, but through modeled experience. A good mentor is tantamount to our raising standards of excellence, not only for ourselves but ou...

Watching Ann Curry's heartwrenching goodbye Thursday on "The Today Show," I wept like a school girl. Who didn't? When was the last time viewers were treated to such honest, gripping emotion? First, kudos to the NBC executives who allowed her to have her five minutes. As critical as I am of her ousting, it could have been far worse -- we might have awakened to her simply being gone, like an anchor-cum-Sopranos victim. She could have been 86'd like the first Darren on "Bewitched" or the superiority of network programming over cable (oops - did I say that out loud?) Yet, we all know that what happened to her was merely what happens to all of us women of a certain age who are no longer desirable in the eyes of our male bosses - or in her case, the imaginary viewers these male bosses felt had lost interest. Their golden boy, after all, has to fight the drool coming out of his mouth whenever Savannah Guthrie or Natalie Morales are at his side. Is this a ...