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Bob Herbert Ends 18 Year Run at the NY Times

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Deeper_Background, Mar 26, 2011.

  1. Deeper_Background

    Deeper_Background Active Member

    Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish, liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed and unrestrained corporate power have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.

    The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.

    Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/opinion/26herbert.html?_r=1&hp
     
  2. shockey

    shockey Active Member

    i worked with bob at the n.y. daily news; he was one of my more willing mentors as a cub cityside reporter (1980-81), always taking the time to help a newbie along. i'm saddened that the plight of present-day america has finally worn him down but am happy for him that it appears like this farewell is entirely on his own terms. i'll eagerly await for his book project to be published.

    thanks much to a man whose heart is always in the right place; whether or not you admired his work, i don't think any of his readers will argue that.
     
  3. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    Strong and true words by Herbert. May he find anothetr bully pulpit for them
     
  4. Drip

    Drip Active Member

    Another dark day for this industry.
     
  5. Deeper_Background

    Deeper_Background Active Member

    I’ll miss Bob Herbert
    By E.J. Dionne Jr.
    New York Times columnist Bob Herbert has written his last New York Times column, but I hope and expect he will stay in the debate. He lived up to the venerable injunction that journalists should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. We need his passion.

    More than any other columnist, Bob has stayed on the story of the left-out: the poor, and working people whose incomes have stagnated or fallen through the floor. He heard them out and told their stories. He paid close attention when Washington had a chance to act on their behalf, and when, too often, it missed those opportunities or made things worse. He never pulled punches about the scandal of growing economic inequality in the United States Yes, Bob expanded the boundaries. He followed his own star and didn’t care a bit if what he wrote about bore little resemblance to the political agenda that was dominating the capital at any given moment -- even as he also sought to move that agenda in more promising directions. I suspect Bob appreciated the Old Testament prophets of justice: Micah, Isaiah and Amos. Bob’s voice thunders, and it is a righteous thunder.


    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/ill-miss-bob-herbert/2011/03/29/AFlZ7DuB_blog.html
     
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