Journalists do like sources who talk plainly, truthfully and on the record. That’s doubtless. A trustworthy and talkative source not only makes the job easier, but more enjoyable. Journalists like to interview people as much as they like to write, after all. When I think back on my jouralism, I have fond memories of my favorite sources.
That said, this, from the always excellent Eschaton blog, is not quite how things work:
“People long said about Woodward that if you talk to him, he makes you look good, if you don’t, he makes you look bad. True of all these things, to some extent.”
Journalists don’t punish people for not talking and we don’t purposefully favor the sources that do. It’s more that sources who talk have more opportunity to get their stories out and they can fill in blanks and explain nuance. Sources who don’t talk but who are factually part of the story anyway, don’t avail themselves of that.
Which isn’t to say that if you’re approached by a reporter you should always talk. In my on-staff journalism days, a colleague and I used to joke that we should form a PR agency where we only advised people not to comment or cooperate with any story. There are a lot of ways that cooperating can go wrong, especially if you don’t have a great story to tell.
But the implication here — that Woodward punished people who didn’t help him and lionized thosed that did is, I think, wrong. If the talkers came off better, it was because they told the story, not because Woodward rewarded or punished.
This is a literary, rather than political place (so it’s a supeior place) but Molly Ivins was a literary journalist with great wit, so it’s fair to ask what she might have said about Donald Trump, had she not died in 2007.
In her papers at the University of Texas, there’s tantalizing mention of some of her notes about Trump in 2007. It’d be lovely if somebody from the university would put those online, as I’m sure they’d be of interest.
The internet mostly has articles where other writers fantasize about what Ivins might have said and while that’s fun, it’s not quite what I was looking for. It looks like, though Trump was a public figure throughout Ivins’ career, that she didn’t care much about him, which is just more evidence of her judgment and taste. I did find this but from The Texas Observer, where Ivins bemoans the lack of tough questions being posed to either Al Gore or George W. Bush leading up to what turned out to be a historically important election in 2000:
“Early in November, we had the grave matter of whether Al Gore is an alpha male thoroughly parsed for us — one newsmagazine made it the lead story. We were also confronted with George W. Bush’s ignorance of the names of three out of four leaders in world trouble spots, and this called for much double-doming and deep dissection. After Ronald Reagan, who didn’t know all the names of his own Cabinet members, you would think there was little excitement to be mined in that department. The disquieting news that John McCain has a temper has been thoroughly mulled over by all and sundry. All this follows months of discussion on burning topics like W. Bush’s alleged drug use thirty years ago, vast attention to Gore’s shifting from blue suits to earth tones, Donald Trump being treated as though any reasonable citizen would consider voting for him, the Warren Beatty candidacy, and much more that is of no help whatever in selecting the next Leader of the Free World.”
So, there you have it. Ivins dismissed Trump, then running as Reform Party candidate, as an irrelevant clown.
“Why is Kubrick trending?” I wonder, and fall right into one of Twitter’s traps, despite having watched The Social Dilemma just two short days ago. I click, thinking maybe some undiscovered work has emerged or somebody has found yet another clever way to link Dr. Strangelove to current events. Instead I get this:
The Twitter takes were harsh and cutting. There are the jokes about Kubrick somehow not living up to his potential, there are the screen grabs that prove that most of Kubrick’s output was an outright criticism of toxic masculinity, there are screen grabs of other headlines by Mendelsohn that reveal, to put it kindly, immature tastes.
Which got me thinking, he must be young. I found his bio on ScreenRant and for sure he is new at this and developing his style there and at CBR.com, putting out a mix of serviceable listicles and criticism. He seems to be enjoying himself.
“Jon Mendelsohn is a graduate of Ithaca College with a degree in film. Currently a writer for both CBR and Screen Rant, Jon is also a filmmaker and lover of anything and everything pop culture. When not writing or binge-watching Netflix, Jon loves to travel and find all the hottest foodie spots.”
He’s just out of school. He’s making films, thinking about films, talking about films and writing about them. He’s also coming up in an age where living wages for writing is rare, where the internet demands quantity over quality and where the traditional and vital relationships between editors and young writers is hard to come by.
Put another way, how many editors saved me from my own piss-poor, just out of school takes? Mendelsohn is trying to make his way through the world with some productive grit and creativity. The temptation to earn internet clout by citing Kubrick’s “toxic masculinity” as his artistic Achilles’ heel may be intense.
At my feet sits a bin of notebooks, written mostly between 1997-2000. Some of those thoughts went into columns and reviews I wrote for Lies Magazine. I had column one devoted to politics and one to jazz and blues music. That I considered myself an authority on jazz and blues is now embarrassing to admit. Politics is for everybody, but jazz and blues? That takes deeper understanding and I didn’t have it then and don’t have it now. Really liking Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown is not enough.
I’m always tempted to look in those notebooks but I know there’s embarrassment on top of embarrassment in there. Fortunately, they’re at my feet and not online. Even the stuff I put online, for publications or my old blog, seem not to have survived outside of the Wayback Machine, if they’re even there.
Young writers and critics and artists today are really operating without a net. They can publish on impulse and so their impulses have to be perfect. Hopefully, the day that a young John Mendelsohn tried to get a dead Stanley Kubrick to get over his hang-ups and realize his potential won’t be long remembered. If it is, let’s remember it for the risks young writers, thinkers and artists face these days. Mendelsohn has plenty of time to realize his potential and I’m sure he will, if he’s encouraged with care.
