Mencken on Journalism
24 January 2008
Editor, Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071
Dear Editor:
J. McDonald Kennedy's encomium for the Baltimore Sun (Letters, January 24) fails to mention what is perhaps the Sun's finest contribution not only to journalism but to American letters and wisdom: the great Sun reporter H.L. Mencken. Mencken's style and philosophy of vigorous journalism were on display when he wrote in 1942 that "In my day a reporter who took an assignment was fully on his own until he got back to the office, and even then he was little molested until his copy was turned in at the desk; today he tends to become only a homunculus at the end of a telephone wire, and the reduction of his observations to prose is commonly farmed out to literary castrati who never leave the office, and hence never feel the wind of the world in their faces or see anything with their own eyes."
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Editor, Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071
Dear Editor:
J. McDonald Kennedy's encomium for the Baltimore Sun (Letters, January 24) fails to mention what is perhaps the Sun's finest contribution not only to journalism but to American letters and wisdom: the great Sun reporter H.L. Mencken. Mencken's style and philosophy of vigorous journalism were on display when he wrote in 1942 that "In my day a reporter who took an assignment was fully on his own until he got back to the office, and even then he was little molested until his copy was turned in at the desk; today he tends to become only a homunculus at the end of a telephone wire, and the reduction of his observations to prose is commonly farmed out to literary castrati who never leave the office, and hence never feel the wind of the world in their faces or see anything with their own eyes."
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Tuesday June 17, 2008 at 9:52am