Joe the Plumber

Did you read or hear about the big news in the world of journalism? Joe Wurzelbacher aka Joe the Plumber from Holland, Ohio has been hired by a conservative web site, Pajamas TV. He is off to Israel to act as a war correspondent. The "establishment" journalists are in a tizzy. Norah O'Donnell of MSNBC is totally incensed. Wouldn't it would be more than fab to have transcripts or audios from every journalistic university in the nation to find out how professors are handling this assault on their livelihoods. From the 'professional' viewpoint it's surely, "how despicable". From a layman's view, "ho-hum, pass the gravy, please".
I'm not taking sides on this since I've never been to journalism school. I have had some experience in journalism, however. When I was a junior in high school I was on the staff of our school newspaper. I also was a member of the basketball team. We had a huge game coming up with a very talented conference opponent. I was hoping to get more of the student body to the game so my buddy and I decided to jazz up a pregame article. We thought if it was written that the visiting team had a 7'4" center word would spread and the gymnasium would be jam packed to see this descendant of Goliath. Evidently, it's not proper to lie in a news article even though I insisted to our school sponsor it was only a slight exaggeration. Goliath II was actually 6'4". We were kicked off the Bumble B school newspaper staff and told, "if we wanted to write in this fashion we could just apply for jobs at the New York Times."*
Hey! Wasn't it Coach Bobby Knight who once said about news writers: "most of us learn to read and write by age six then move on to better things?"
* I made up the part about the New York Times.