Picking up from Yeats's description of journalists ("There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness... The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth"), the witty New Zealand columnist Deborah Hill Cone muses on journalistic self-criticism, low self esteem and pusillanimity during her country's current election campaign. Her message to fellow hacks: don't lose the plot and don't be obsequious ("Niceness is the enemy of good journalism"). We need nasty journalists.
She is (sort of) optimistic about the coming generations though. "This whole free press thing, it may not be perfect, but it's the best system we've got. But never mind, the more we journalists are loathed, the more bright young things sign up to media studies courses wanting to become one." (Via New Zealand Herald)
