What I want to know

Does Michael Gordon have a degree in journalism?

Does, to pick a semi-random counterexample, Sy Hersh?

I wonder whether there's any (positive or negative) correlation between journalism school and good journalism.

-- catfood

I haven't paid attention to all of their resumes, but hazarding a guess, I think many of the better reporters have a degree in something other than journalism, except maybe the old-school reporters who may not have had a degree at all, but learned on the job.

Charlie Savage Savage, for example: [from wikipedia]

Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1975, Savage earned an undergraduate degree in English and American literature and language from Harvard College in 1998 and a master's degree in 2003 from Yale Law School, where he was a Knight Foundation journalism fellow. He began his reporting career in 1999 as a staff writer for the Miami Herald, where he covered local and state government and occasionally reviewed movies. Before he moved to the Boston Globe in 2003, his articles appeared under the byline "Charles Savage."

Molly Ivins, on the other hand, did get a masters in journalism because she knew that as a woman she would need more credentials if she did not want to be relegated to the Women's style page.

She matriculated to Smith College, receiving her B.A. in 1966. She earned a master's degree at Columbia University's school of journalism. She then studied at the Institute of Political Science in Paris for a year.[2][3] [from wikipedia]

[and from one of the refs.]

In the early 1960s, she attended Smith College, got involved in the civil rights movement and was struck by the realization that she said creates all Southern liberals: "Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything."

Re: Sy Hersh, I could only find that he graduated from the University of Chicago, nothing about his major.

You could have a column about cook books and the crazies would crawl out of the slime screaming it's the Jew's fault. And if only those fucking Jews would go away and become Muslims all the cookbooks in the world would welcome in an era of peace of good food.

Iran, Iran, Iran. Not the evil Joooooz. Try to at least pretend to stay on task.

And for the record, anything you say here about those dastardly world dominating kikes is accepted as gospel. So stop lecturing that anything else is verboten. Thanks.

Define "practical." It is really hard for me to imagine a meaningful solution with four-some-odd million Palestinians packed in the West Bank and Gaza, and four million in the diaspora without any right of return.

Well it is really hard for me to imagine a meaningful solution that puts Jews as a minority in Israel. So if a Palestinian majority in Israel truly is a deal-breaker for their side than I'm afraid the problem truly is intractable.

But I don't believe that to be the case.

Is Electrobot AKA Sugarman?

The formatting alone tells you that.

I'm mystified as to how either of you can read "genuine peace has always been easy to achieve" as anything but "peace is easy to achieve."

Along with Fred Hiatt and Bill Kristol, it seems Michael Gordon has hunkered down with that Murder of Crows on the phone-line between Washington and Smalltown, USA, polluting with meaningless squawks those all-important channels of communication between our Public Servants and ourselves. The plague of journalists pontificating on public policy continues, while, if they truly wished to serve their country and themselves (I say, "Truly"), they should be analyzing events through reasoned assessment of carefully-sought and documented facts. This is yet another waste of precious time that further spoils the Public Forum. There is no place for journalists to specify public policy, or stamp existing policy with either a seal of approval or dismissal.

The best use of journalism is to present evidence and analysis in a thorough discussion of careful research. Perhaps after doing this, one may be entitled to put forth reasoned conclusions. Instead, such journalists as these are but a crop of mercenary talking heads sprouting from the tree of institutionalized greed. That indecent and unnatural structure is perpetuated to ruthlessly squander the wealth of nations for the purpose of providing its masters with modern-day island castles, carefully secured far from the unclean masses whom they loath (yet upon whom they depend for all that they enjoy in life).

How thin and transparent is the posturing and strutting of that whole culture of parasitism. Under pretense of public service they spew absurdities in government and their captive media, while they hold reins of power through an iron control of means and goods, through such devices as debt, so-called "Trade Agreements," commercial domination of things essential to survival (energy, food, and water), and other unholy exercise of Ownership Privilege. Perhaps they deserve pity more than wrath, but still, it is unacceptable behavior that ought to be declared for what it is, as you and others have done here in this blog for some time now.

Please show me where I have endorsed Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Otherwise STFU.

Well it is really hard for me to imagine a meaningful solution that puts Jews as a minority in Israel.

IIRC, there are 7 million Jews in Israel and about 8 million Palestinians in the diaspora. So, unless we're talking about complete, immediate return of all Palestinians wherever they are, a Jewish minority is not really under discussion. Population growth, of course, is another matter, and a reasonable concern.

As I say, though, some right of return is going to have to be on the table. It can, however, be surprising what can be accomplished with negotiations. Not easy or guaranteed, but even the old bulldog Churchill knew that jaw-jaw was preferable to war-war...

What else are they going to write about regarding Iran? The President's latest finding where we play nice and provide aid to "good" terrorist groups in order to overthrow "bad" ones?

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12784

http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew05022008.html

Such wise policy. Iran is to be bombed into the stone age for supposedly giving aid and training to terrorists in Iraq and Lebanon, among others. Yet none of these moral, warmongering interventionists are outraged when we promote the same agenda, i.e. giving a pass (and aid) to terrorist organizations in Iran in order to destabilize and overthrow the current tyranny, as long as they are on "our" side, for the time being anyway. Kind of like Osama Bin Laden. You know, "good guy" terrorists, at least until they become "bad guy" terrorists (once again).