Outdated Terminology

     I am pretty tired of the term "media elite."

     It pigeonholes everyone involved in newsgathering. As if the media from the NYTimes to your hyperlocal digital website run by an exhausted ex-newspaperman was a monolith.

     We don't feel terribly elite much of the time. Like when we are living on stale coffee and melted candy bars on a midnight deadline. Or when the high school fieldhouse is on fire and there's no place to get a picture that isn't in the line of fire from a fire hose.
   
     People see the anchors of national news with their bespoke suits and hundred dollar haircuts. They don't see the rookie reporter living on raman noodles in an apartment shared with three other reporters and shopping at the Methodist Thrift Shop. 

     Of course some people can see the difference.  Those we cover closely know the difference between real reporters and superstar anchors and the difference between them both and the dilettantes who call themselves journalists because they can type. The officials who have seen us weekly for years may learn to finesse our questions, but, if they do their job well, they know when we do ours professionally. Most people who just read the news and don't make the news never think about what we do or how hard we work to do it.

    This dreadful, interminable election season has brought that into focus.  I see people whom I always assumed were pretty smart commenting on Facebook about things they obviously read that were written by someone who did absolutely no research and relied on no primary sources. I'm not just talking about people on the right. Some of my liberal friends also remind me of the Red Queen who could often believe two impossible things before breakfast. 

     The legacy newspapers and their digital presences, NPR and the old-line television news shows do our research, reach out to sources and work really hard for the truth. Fox (Faux) News and the loudmouths of AM radio do not. Don't put us all in the same wheelbarrow. And, for Cronkite's sake, don't believe ANYTHING you read on social media. It was probably posted by a 17-year-old in Macedonia with a wicked sense of humor and a fondness for marijuana brownies.