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‘College is wasted on the young’

So said the wife of the Mighty Favog, an LSU alumnus friend after reading the “sex issue” of our old college paper, the Daily Reveille, on which my LSU pal and I both worked. Favog blogs on it here. The editorial cartoon from the paper that he highlights gives you an idea of how lame […]

So said the wife of the Mighty Favog, an LSU alumnus friend after reading the “sex issue” of our old college paper, the Daily Reveille, on which my LSU pal and I both worked. Favog blogs on it here. The editorial cartoon from the paper that he highlights gives you an idea of how lame the sex issue was.

I’m really embarrassed for those journalists kids. I might forgive the vulgarity if only it were redeemed by wit, charm, or the slightest smidge of intelligence. But it’s so pluperfectly dumb it makes Beavis and Butt-head sound like Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. Is there a grown-up in charge there who signed off on this?

And yes, I actually do expect more out of college journalists than this, having been one, and having been one at this newspaper. One of my classmates is now a Wall Street Journal personal finance reporter, and another Reveille writer from my era is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Sorry if this seems crabby, but I am proud of my LSU journalism degree, and proud of the work we did on the Reveille. There is a certain seriousness with which one should approach one’s vocation as a journalist — and seriousness is not the same thing as solemnity.

One lesson from this that will always be true, no matter how experienced a journalist you are: Sex is far easier to do well than to write about well.

 

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