E-Mailed to 'Pressthink'
[In reference to this]
Update Jay Rosen e-mailed me back promptly and assured me the inability to post at his site was a glitch of some sort, not an intentional block. He even offered to post something I would e-mail, but I told him that didn't seem wirth it. It would be something like comment #115 in the thread, and anyway my inability to really identify myself would mean whatever I could say would fail to convince the doubters who find my descrptions of my workplace unsuited to their perceptions of reality.
Besides, it's much more fun to sit back and watch people who think everything's fine in the big media wear down their keyboards "proving" I can't possibly exist. And my co-workers -- the two who didn't drink the Bush=Hitler-flavored Kool-Aid -- have already gained the phrase "worse newsroom in Christendom" out of it, which was well worth the price of being called a liar by one of the deans of American journalism.
I am the person who blogs under this name. I find it highly amusing, and a bit disturbing, to be called a liar by the managing editor of CJR, on your site, for writing of things of which I know and he cannot -- the daily conditions at my job. I also find it highly amusing and a bit sad that he is a leader in our profession, yet so focused on his pre-conceptions that he cannot even come up with a logical reason for calling me a liar for writing about what I know and he doesn't.
And finally, I find it highly unamusing that my cyber-identity can be cyber-libeled on your pages, yet when I try to post any reply at all in my defense, the comment is rejected for "objectionable content." If the false accusation has the floor and the truth can't get a foot in the door, then we're in a shape as sad as Patrick says.
I would sign my name if I trusted you not to reveal it. I have no reason to feel such trust based on current level of experience. My bosses have vowed to fire me if I write online about newsroom matters without first getting their approval, or if I blog in any form. Jeff Jarvis knows the story.
Update Jay Rosen e-mailed me back promptly and assured me the inability to post at his site was a glitch of some sort, not an intentional block. He even offered to post something I would e-mail, but I told him that didn't seem wirth it. It would be something like comment #115 in the thread, and anyway my inability to really identify myself would mean whatever I could say would fail to convince the doubters who find my descrptions of my workplace unsuited to their perceptions of reality.
Besides, it's much more fun to sit back and watch people who think everything's fine in the big media wear down their keyboards "proving" I can't possibly exist. And my co-workers -- the two who didn't drink the Bush=Hitler-flavored Kool-Aid -- have already gained the phrase "worse newsroom in Christendom" out of it, which was well worth the price of being called a liar by one of the deans of American journalism.
