As a teen, I loved the 1972 Alka-Seltzer TV commercial “I Can’t Believe I Ate the Whole Thing.” That’s not unusual: I can’t remember anyone—friends, teachers, family—who didn’t slip the catchphrase into conversations. Most advertisements back then, like today, were awful, but gems popped now and again, and none consumed half the spot with disclaimers like “Consult a doctor before using Alka-Seltzer, as it may cause dizziness, nausea, high blood pressure or even death.” As it happens, I’ve never once thrown back a glass of the fizzy remedy, but those ads were boss.
I mention this because recently I saw Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell’s farewell column after taking a buyout—she’s 40, spent 11 years at the daily and this fall will ramp up her duties at MSNBC—and I can’t believe I read the whole thing. Headlined “11 tips for becoming a columnist”—presumptuous for a fairly young woman, unlike, say George Will (who’d rather miss an entire baseball season than write such drivel)—it was disingenuous and self-celebratory nonsense. Her “tips,” while straight-forward, don’t at all mesh with her 11 years of “takes.” I didn’t feel soiled after reading it—maybe 15 years ago, but today one’s inured to such anodyne strings of sentences—but was annoyed I made the effort. Chalk it up to a hallucinogenic twist on There’s No Business Like Show Business.
She begins (perhaps cribbing from a college term paper): “So you wanna be a columnist, eh? Young aspiring journalists [a nearly extinct species] and wizened elders often ask how I scored this sweet gig. Truth is, I don’t entirely know… Still, I can offer advice to other lucky pundits who land this perch.” As the daughter of Princeton alumni, where she also matriculated, and many “perches” at The New York Times before “scoring her sweet gig,” I’d guess she knows precisely how and why her career arc proceeded, but like “old money” Americans think it’s gauche to talk about money, journalists with the right credentials don’t talk about that. Perhaps she says that she went to a college not far from Trenton.
Rampell continues: “There’s often a trade-off between short-term interestingness and long-term reputation. You can get more clicks today with a bold prediction or hot take, then have egg on your face almost immediately thereafter… Social media and the more fractured news landscape have increased incentives for hot takes… [But] your sources will remember when you got over your skis.” (Countless Washington Post reporters, past and present as owner Jeff Bezos is trimming the still-enormous fat, have faces that resemble fried eggs, but none more than Dana Milbank, who swore to readers that Trump wouldn’t get the GOP nomination or win the presidency. That must’ve increased his TDS five-fold.)
Sources? I didn’t see a single one in Rampell’s “hot take” about “Democrats risk taking the wrong lessons from Trumpism.”
I doubt many remember Rampell’s funniest instance of “getting over her skis” (I had to look it up), but it was published almost a year ago when the Democrats, shorn of Sippy Cup Joe Biden, were infatuated, inebriated, empowered and honored by every faux-charisma moment coming out of Kamp Kamalot. She wrote: “Move over Ryan Gosling. The modern female fantasy is embodied by the man who might soon become our First Gentleman. [Doug] Emhoff seems secure enough with his own masculinity to sometimes prioritize his wife’s ambitions over his own. What. A. Hunk.”
Maybe there were other such hand jobs given to Pugilist Doug—what am I thinking, of course there were—but how does that “hot take” look today? What. A. Dumb. Column.
The photo above was taken at the City Paper offices in Baltimore’s Charles Village (despite the clutter, the building was a classic rowhouse), one spring day when a local TV station—must’ve been a really slow “news” day—interviewed Alan Hirsch (tie) and me (cap and moth-eaten sweater from the 1960s) about the moderate success of the weekly we co-owned. We were thrilled, figuring that TV exposure would lead to advertisements (it didn’t) and so were very polite to the interlocuters rattling off stupid questions.
Had we been asked, “What tips do you have for aspiring journalists?” there would’ve been silence. We were 23. But today, after 51 years in the business—publishing three newspapers and a website, writing thousands of articles and columns, weathering the headaches, and accomplishments, of employees (like when an advertising salesman dropped trou in front of a typesetter)—my answer would be: don’t waste money on journalism school. And if you can’t write what you want, find a different place to work.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: The London Review of Books is launched; Thomas Flanagan’s Year of the French, Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer, Joan Didion’s The White Album and Sam Shepard’s Buried Child are published; Steve Stills is the first artist to record digitally; none of the four songs are released; Simple Minds make their first TV appearance; Joe Perry leaves Aerosmith; Bauhaus’ “Bella Lugosi’s Dead” is released; Kevin Youkilis is born and Al Capp dies; MLB umpires go on strike for six weeks; the Montreal Canadiens win the Stanley Cup; the Susan B. Anthony dollar is released in the U.S.; Richard Ben Cramer win the International Reporting Pulitzer; 23 morons vote against Willie Mays’ enshrinement in the Hall of Fame; and John McEnroe wins the U.S. Open.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023
