So, did anyone over in The Columbian's editorial department actually train for their position? What passes for journalism in this rag is a travesty -- and an insult to everyone who bothers to read it.
Today's front-page story heralded the arrival of their new public employee salary database -- which isn't really a database, because it only shows the top 20 salaries. And it isn't really an accurate representation of tax spending, because it omits contractors and private non-profits that operate with government funds. And it isn't really an indicator of actual pay, because it leaves out benefits and supplemental income. Oh, and it isn't really newsworthy because it's public information published totally out of context.
In his story about how great the Columbian's reporting is for offering publicly available information, hack reporter Michael Andersen congratulates himself and his employer for their incredible achievement of making absolutely no contribution to a productive conversation.
He uses plenty of loaded words and phrases to make it sound like he's actually done something resembling journalism, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence to support it. He offers no context or background on any of the salaries he infers are too high, accuses unions of corruption because they and their employers didn't break contracts, and makes no comparison at all to the private sector. Not only that, he can't even keep his argument straight and manages at one point to contradict himself in back-to-back sentences.
The fact that Andersen wrote this article, and an editor let it through, is yet another indicator that The Columbian is done.
More on that to come.
Wednesday Open Thread
14 hours ago
