MEDIA PETTINESS AND HOSTILITY

What Nobody Tells You About Political Reporters

A landmark book shows how journalists and politicians manipulate each other — and you — with their stories

“The Boys on the Bus” with Connie Chung and others / Random House and National Press Club

My college recently killed its journalism major, which had been turning out gifted reporters, including Pulitzer winners, for a half century. It gave two reasons for the move: a declining interest among students and too few jobs for graduates.

I didn’t major in journalism, but I took all the news- and feature-writing courses I could. That training helped me land a staff job on a national magazine weeks before graduation. I had to skip the ceremony to start work by the expected date.

The days are gone when well-trained journalists — or writers of any kind — could reasonably expect to land great jobs well before graduation. And it’s easy to look back on that era and pine for a mythical golden age when young reporters felt confident that they could “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted” with the support of their bosses.

That’s a natural response when newspapers are closing at the rate of two a week and the profession is reeling from events such as the announcement by the Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos that from now on, its…