My problem with BP’s decision and Shell’s participation is these projects is that they did not seize a hostage to prevent this outcome. When dealing with rogue states is imperative that you have valuable hostages to ensure that the barbarians on the other side live up to the bargain.

Whenever I’m at a social function with media types, esp. editors or managers, I ask what, exactly, do they teach at J-schools. I usually get a dumb look and have to repeat the question. If I persist, I eventually get an answer that is laughable, risible, or meaningless.

Journalism, like P-12 education, is being ruined by a variety of things, but academic pretensions and credentialism are high on the list in both cases. Primary and secondary education would be far better served by bringing back the old normal schools, and journalism by an apprenticeship model (if there are any “master journalists” left, who could mentor apprentices) like the old City News. These are fields you should have a love for and learn by doing.

Yeah. Also, the journalism profession has a bias against specialization, so you get people covering important issues who miss things and are easily manipulated, because they don’t know the field. Without expertise and the possibility of original analysis, journalists are left with “access” and gossip-mongering. The worst of these people, such as CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo and Charles Gasparino (who, BTW, used to and perhaps still does write for the WSJ), make their careers by serving as conduits for other people’s agendas.

I think that there are occupations where the people are systematically second-rate. In the case of big-media journalism this is due, IMO, to the fact that people with real expertise and/or analytical skills have much-better-paying options than MSM jobs, and also to the tendency of journalism executives and j-school professors to treat expertise and business experience as prima facie evidence of conflict of interest for journalists. (Of course, bloggers aren’t hamstrung by these constraints.)

I think the problem in business reporting especially acute. Who grows up wanting to be in business journalism? People end up in business journalism because they couldn’t get the high status political beat.

As for BP itself, I think it merely another case hubris. People who rise to the top of major corporations are very smart and used to outwitting others. They assume that because they can control events in a lawful environment that they can control events in a lawless one.

As my grandfather once observed, just because your tough doesn’t mean the snake won’t bite you.

Besides reporters, how about editors? And if this is the, ahem, quality at the WSJ, just imagine The New York Times.