No blood in ants
This summer, I published a long article in American Journalism Review arguing that newspapers will have a hard time remaking themselves for the 21st Century because actual journalists have become so disconnected from the daily life of the communities that they cover. With that in mind, I saw a jarring quote today about the retirement of the Washington Post's longtime editor, Len Downie (h/t Romenesko):
I've blogged about Downie before -- he's such a journalistic monk that he didn't even register to vote until he retired. And I don't mean to pick on him, because by all accounts he was a good boss and is a good human being. But think about it: The man who directed news coverage at arguably the second or third most influential newspaper in America for the last 17 years was only friends mostly with other journalists -- folks who, among other things, tend to live in a uniformly upper middle class world. This in one of the nation's most dynamic cities, full of artists and detectives, scientists and soldiers.
If Len Downie only hung around with other journalists, where did he get his ideas for what was news?
