The J-don weighs in by James Panero

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In the Aeneid, the Roman poet Virgil sang of "arms and a man" (Arma virumque cano). Month in and month out, The New Criterion expounds with great clarity and wit on the art, culture, and political controversies of our times. With postings of reviews, essays, links, recs, and news, Armavirumque seeks to continue this mission in accordance with the timetable of the digital age.

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Mar 15, 2005 01:25 PM

The J-don weighs in

by James Panero

Jay Rosen is a professor of journalism and former chairman of New York University’s school of journalism. He also runs a weblog in an obscure corner of the publishing world called ’PressThink,’ where he has posted a response to Ken Minogue’s "Journalism: Power without responsibility" from the February TNC. Well worth reading, both for Rosen’s insights into Minogue’s article as well as for what I detect to be a few moments of genuine surprise as a courtier learns that his Sun King might be fallible after all. Rosen writes:

In the matter of how did we come to be attacked for being biased? I have an excursion to recommend. It’s not topical. It’s not typical. The tone is in fact classical; the frame of reference is the whole history and literature of the West. "Journalism: Power without responsibility" is an essay by Kenneth Minogue, who writes in the old school style of the learned man taking in a large subject and tracing things back to their roots. I found it in an obscure corner of the publishing world, Hilton Kramer’s literary and cultural magazine, New Criterion. ( "A monthly review of the arts and intellectual life.")
Minogue’s excursion is a challenging read. It will not sound familiar to working journalists, unless they took a great books curriculum in college. He writes in a tradition of culturally conservative criticism (you could also say high-mindedness) that looks with disdain on "sex, drugs and rock ’n roll." Liberation into appetite is not his idea of social progress. But then progress is not his idea of what to expect from life.
This is not my tradition--at all.

Rosen concludes:

These are some of Kenneth Minogue’s suggestions for how things got to where they are between the cultural right and journalism. I don’t buy all of it, but then I am not a cultural conservative in the New Criterion mold. I do recommend reading "Journalism: Power without responsibility." In fact, I recommend struggling with it.

As for Professor Rosen’s post, I recommend the same.