"There aren't enough good journalists. There are too many who really weren't groomed to be reporters and, as a result, some of the reporting is shallow"
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McDonough’s complaint lands with the cranky clarity of someone who lived in the newsroom long enough to know when the craft is being counterfeited. “There aren’t enough good journalists” isn’t nostalgia for typewriters; it’s an indictment of a pipeline that produces content-makers without producing reporters. The key word is “groomed”: journalism here is apprenticeship, not vibe. You learn how to knock on doors, read budgets, cultivate sources without becoming their stenographer, and write with enough precision that someone might have to answer for it.
The subtext is economic and institutional. When he says people “weren’t groomed,” he’s talking about editors with time to edit, beats with continuity, and organizations willing to absorb the cost of being wrong slowly rather than profitable quickly. “Shallow” becomes a shorthand for a whole ecology: parachute reporting, quote-aggregation, and the substitution of opinion for verification because it’s cheaper, faster, and easier to brand.
McDonough wrote before social media fully rewired attention, but the diagnosis maps cleanly onto the late-20th-century turn toward lighter staffing and more filler. Even then, the pressure was building: more pages, more airtime, more demand for freshness, less patience for shoe-leather. His intent isn’t elitism so much as a warning about civic consequences. If reporters aren’t trained to do the hard, often tedious work, power gets a free pass. Shallow reporting doesn’t just bore; it misleads by omission, turning accountability into theater and facts into atmosphere.
The subtext is economic and institutional. When he says people “weren’t groomed,” he’s talking about editors with time to edit, beats with continuity, and organizations willing to absorb the cost of being wrong slowly rather than profitable quickly. “Shallow” becomes a shorthand for a whole ecology: parachute reporting, quote-aggregation, and the substitution of opinion for verification because it’s cheaper, faster, and easier to brand.
McDonough wrote before social media fully rewired attention, but the diagnosis maps cleanly onto the late-20th-century turn toward lighter staffing and more filler. Even then, the pressure was building: more pages, more airtime, more demand for freshness, less patience for shoe-leather. His intent isn’t elitism so much as a warning about civic consequences. If reporters aren’t trained to do the hard, often tedious work, power gets a free pass. Shallow reporting doesn’t just bore; it misleads by omission, turning accountability into theater and facts into atmosphere.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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