Los Angeles Times veteran Joel Sappell voices all the familiar cliches in American Journalism Review as he decides to take the buyout and leave the newspaper after 27 years.
His piece is utterly without surprise.
He just trundles out the same tired cliches.
There’s no mention of how he and his colleagues went wrong. All the problems at the Times have been management’s fault. It doesn’t seem to even occur to him that he and his peers might’ve made mistakes, might’ve put out a shoddy dull paper that is deservingly going down the drain.
He calls legal affairs reporter Henry Weinstein "the conscience of the newspaper."
Does he really mean that cliche? In what ways was it true?
Any organization that depends on one person to be its conscience is in big trouble.
I only notice organizations on the Left having one person who is their "conscience." Republicans don’t have a conscience of their party. Traditional Orthodox shuls don’t rely on one person to be their conscience.
Joel writes how shocking it was that Linda Greenhouse took the buyout at the New York Times. Shocking for who outside certain members of the news media? She’s 61. She’s a predictable liberal. It’s no great loss to journalism.
Sappell gets a year’s salary with his buyout. That’s a great deal for a journalist. Few writers are so lucky.
