Celebrity journalism

Today's episode of Little Miss Know-it-All: Reporters are celebrities! Yes, we are! YES, WE ARE!!!

I'm noticing a disturbing trend: reporters who think that they are famous.

This is the cover photo from today's paper. Note that the editors have turned a run-of-the-mill non-event (art class) into a cover story simply because a reporter took part in the class. What? A reporter's getting naked? Hold the presses! That's TOTALLY different than every other class, when some nobody gets naked!

Seriously, you'd think it was the high school's paper.

Earlier this week, I was subjected to the latest in a series of CBC contests. The contestants are CBC reporters, and the judges are CBC reporters. As you can imagine, the listeners are on the edges of their seats. Who will have the best cranberry recipe? Who knows more 1960s trivia?

This, of course, is because reporters believe that other reporters are fascinating, much more exciting than those boring old "newsmakers" out there. Why interview a stranger about something significant, interesting or new when you could just talk to the guy in the next cubicle about what he brought for lunch?

It is the logical extension of reporters interviewing other reporters. This is called a "debrief". When a story breaks, there often isn't time to edit a packaged story, so the host will interview a reporter. The reporter talks about what he learned in his interviews. This, naturally, is WAY WAY BETTER JOURNALISM than, I dunno, letting the people with first-hand knowledge of the issue explain the details.

I know, I'm hot when I talk like a crazy person. You aren't the first to notice.