While I’ve never worked at any of the better staffed major media companies where there might be a little more latitude, my experience of being expected to produce a story within the hour (or close to) does tend to dimish the possibility of being able to produce articles that provide the sort of context that I as a reader would have demanded (with rigorous fact-checking all too easily overlooked). It is for this reason that I used to joke to myself at some of the more ridiculous times that I was the “official press-release reiterator.” The only way I’ve found to avoid this was to find some sort of compromise between quality and quantity. You just have to pick winners, and you have to delegate some stories to being “space-filling articles” which when down briskly enable you to pursue the more important stories in at least something close to detail. Sadly some of these “space-filling articles” are unjustly pumped out to the dictates of the word factory, and with a little more time could have communicated a lot more to the reader. I’ve all too often been in the situation where I have been assigned or uncovered what my editor would consider a minor 200-400 word piece where some source has provided a wealth of material in which I have only scratched the surface. Tragic.

So sorry – you are quite right – lazy should be qualified. And to go further, a lot of the shaping of the journalists’ space is done for them – they have only marginal control. If the editor is happy with ‘he said she said’ or worse still demands it, then it will that much harder to do anything I agree.

Nicholas, I hate journalists as much as the next guy, but in their defence, it’s not always laziness. When you have an hour or two to get an eight hundred word piece in, with three quotes and a statshot, time – and quality – is not something you have, and most editors tend to care about the former, but not so much the latter.

We increasingly look to the media for a constant feed of information and analysis. When the media fail to do the job competently myths develop, leaders are left unaccountable and ignorance/apathy become fashionable.

The entire structure of journalism encourages you to compromise your ethics, writing, and standards for dealing with people.

It’s easy to take baby steps at a time – writing good pieces for a shitty paper, writing shitty pieces for a good publication, writing shitty pieces because the topic is shitty, but it lets you write a good piece on a better topic next time, writing shitty pieces because you have to pay the rent – until one day, you look in the mirror and you see Piers Ackerman looking back.

At least that’s how it felt when I was doing it, and I’ve never felt as ethically compromised since.

My advice would be don’t do it full-time, if you expect every piece to be good quality work. It won’t happen, and the inevitability can be horrible.

And also: Don’t think it’s okay because everyone else in the field does it. They’re hacks.

The main advise I would offer is to impress upon them that if they wish to keep an independent mind, they’re going to have to a lifelong habit of feeling comfortable with the notion that their private opinions may be wrong and thus to never cease updating their best guess of how things work. A good way to do that is to stay friendly and in touch with people you radically disagree with because they will invariably find data sources and arguments you wouldnt find yourself. Hence tell ‘m to keep contacts with the likes of yourself and to never fall into the trap of completely believing any story, even if it is genuinely best-guess.
And if that sounds patronising, well, that seems to be what they ask for.

Do they foul white players using the front of the credit card rather than the back? I know that American football is full of arcane details but this is ridiculous.