WaPo's Gene Weingarten On Fisticuff-Spawning Passions: "Hooray!"

Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten took the time at the end of his "Chatalogical Humor" chat yesterday to weigh in on the recent newsroom dust-up between Henry Allen and Manuel Roig-Franzia. The big takeaway? Gene Weingarten is awesome, for reals:

The first thing I want to say is, hooray. Hooray that there is still enough passion left somewhere in a newsroom in America for violence to break out between colorful characters in disagreement over the quality of a story. (Obligatory mature qualification: I of course decry any breakdown in comity and collegiality and civil discourse in the workplace, and urge all young people to maintain decorum and respect others, to be tolerant of opposing viewpoints, to seek compromise, and to not punch each other out in spit-flying scrums.)

Still, hooray. Newsrooms used to be places filled with interesting eccentrics driven by unreasonable passions -- a situation thought of as "creative tension" and often encouraged by management in eras when profits were high and arrogance was seen not as a flaw but a perquisite of being smart and right. Sadly, over the years newsrooms have come to resemble insurance offices peopled by the blanched and the pinched and the beetle-browed; lately, with layoffs thought to be on the horizon, everyone also behaves extra nicely to please the boss. In the face of potential ruin, journalists have been forced to reach accommodations with themselves: New strictures, new styles, new protocols, new limitations on what is possible are now meekly swallowed. In the frantic scramble for new "revenue streams," ethical boundaries are more likely to be pushed than is the proverbial envelope. Some of all this has leached out into the product. We all feel it. You do, too.

Weingarten goes on at length to praise both pugilists, especially Allen, who Weingarten suspects "doesn't like me very much, I think," but for whom he nevertheless feels "pure hero worship." Then he picks up his critique of the news industry again:

I don't know the ultimate precipitating factor in what led to blows between these two guys on Friday -- for all I know, Manuel strangled Henry's cat. But I do know what I read, that the proximate cause was the quality of written word -- what we put in the paper. It doesn't surprise me. "What we put in the paper," used to be a sacred term in most newsrooms, back before things began to change and some mediocre stuff began to appear with regularity. Back then, the meaning of "the paper" was completely different, too.

The news about the news, for the most part, has stunk for some time: There's been cowardly and crappy decision-making in scary times; ethics, at times, have been mislaid; lousy things have found their way into print, and worthy things -- killed for unworthy reasons -- have not. I am not shocked that tempers boiled over, nor am I shocked that they boiled over between two people who know what has been happening, and care.

Weingarten adds, "I hope Henry is invited and welcomed back to the newsroom; if anyone deserves a little slack, it's him. I hope he and Manuel bury the hatchet. I hope neither of them loses one ounce of passion and I hope each of them remains privately convinced he was right."

Oh! And then you get to the part where he challenges Sally Quinn to fisticuffs, sort of, over The Worst Style Story of All Time. Like I said, Gene Weingarten is awesome.

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Comments

[jimrs]

These tough guys should enlist, and go to the front lines where they are needed.

Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things,
and generally return upon him who began.
Titus Lucretius Carus 99-55 b.c.

[larry278]

Decorum & journalism don't mix. As I recall "The Front Page", was about passionate, dedicated, wily journalists who drank, smoked, frequently used obscene & coarse blasphemy, enjoyed sex as they lived life as she is lived.
Bring back cuspidors to news rooms. Journalism isn't an occupation for the effete.

[flossophy]

So... what was the reason for the newsroom vi0|ence?

[Cunningham]

Are you too lazy to read the article and click on a link?

[TXfemmom]

Personally, I would like to see some Dems thrash some PUBS out on the lawn of the capital. That would be worth breaking in on CNN.

[xryeyes]

I'm sorry, but I fail to find the virtue in two grown men getting into a physical , unprofessional fight. They can have and express passions and fight in other ways, maybe creative humor, maybe scathing letters, maybe even shouting. But fist-fighting? Does the newsroom really need a physical bully in order to revive their courage?
Other professions have also seen hard times and stresses, been subjected to similar types of external and internal pressures that news reporters have. You wouldn't be so proud of two airline pilots duking it out, would you? Two congressmen, two policemen? What kind of confidence would you have in a grown, professional man who gets into a brawl? Would you want to hire such a person or even be around them? Grownups who can't control themselves are a real turnoff. At least one of these guys has limited coping skills, and has committed assault.

[frieda406]

i guess you never liked norman mailer.

[TXfemmom]

Normally, I would be with you, but considering some of the garbage mascerading as journalism today, I say go at it boys.

[mrbums]

The fight is entertaining and all, but I think Gene has a great point about the news business losing its way and letting standards slip while killing good stories for political or economic purposes. more here: http://themediahammer.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/i-love-it/

[SouthernYankeeBelle]

Where have all the good reporters gone. Today's reporters are so afraid of losing their jobs. I would buy a newspaper if a good reporter finally starts holding people accountable for their actions. Especially politicans. All politicans. No reporter today follows the money to get to the story any more. What ever happen to the newspapers that would question a president going to war? The newspapers and MSM let the american people down. They are just as bad as a car salesman.

[stavrogin]

I would admire the passion of these reporters if the fight had been over something important, with yells of "You can't handle the truth!", "No, YOU can't handle the truth!", but it was over a stupid article by that twit Monica Hesse in the always moronic Style section. Here's an example of her writing: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/31/AR2009083101839.html?nav=emailpage

[FatherKindly]

The Washington Post is the last place on earth I can imagine there being a fight over quality. A disagreement over which reporter pays court to the most lobbyists, maybe, but over quality of reporting? Never.

[OBXartist]

In this instance, at least, Gene Weingarten IS awesome and awesomely correct! More passion and less of the cowardly and blind "fairness" we've come to expect lately would go a long way toward reviving the industry.

[toxicbrainpoison]

The Washington post is messed up. They are supposed to be part of the "liberal media machine" but all I ever see is articles down playing global warming and putting the national organization for marriage up on a fake moral pedestal. They are annoyingly blandly conservative and aren't very good at analysis. Eugene is the only contributor worth his salt.

[flossophy]

Maybe they're just starting to be more journalistically responsible. Left wing b|as is a revenue ki||er. Just look at MSNBC.

It's important to remain relevant in this world. A perceived drift to the right is simply an effort to be more objective in their reporting.

[Bitsko]

That's nothing. Over at the Washington Times they have mass weddings. Boy do the fists fly!

[joeyfoto]

If the two went out together and got "Russian drunk" after the dust-up, they would truly be upholding the journalistic tradition that I knew and loved.

[Beaucat]

I'm with you, joeyfoto. In the mid-80s, when I worked for one of Georgia's major dailies, I stood toe to toe in the middle of the newsroom with an editor a time or two screaming at him as he screamed back at me about how a story should be handled.

People nonchalantly went about their jobs while this went on, stepping around us like we were part of the furniture. It was what was known as "creative tension," I guess. The newspaper won a Pulitzer that year (I had nothing to do with it). I didn't like this editor, but I respected him and I learned an awful lot from him. He didn't like me, but he thought I was one of the better writers on the staff.

That was passion. Those days are gone forever.