So, maybe you're wondering what it takes to become a columnist or reporter nowadays.
A degree? Years of working your way up through the biz, starting with obits or, worse, professional hockey? A complete lack of other discernible skills, especially math?
No, it takes none of those things, although it helps. All you need to become a columnist these days is a computer and a blog.
Any Tom, Dick and Heather Armstrong can become a blogger.
We here in the newspaper business don't mind this trend at all. Well, other than the fact that the Internet and bloggers are driving us out of business and eliminating newspaper positions across the country, forcing us to get real jobs.
What are you going to do about people who not only enjoy writing, but will do it FREE for hours and hours of each day, usually in their parents' basement (sorry, that was low — not that I'm bitter). After 30 years in this business, I wouldn't write a letter for free.
There are thousands of columnist and reporter wannabes working as bloggers out there. It's all fair competition for newspaper types.
It's just too bad they don't have to play by the same rules we do.
I mention this now because of that business with President Barack Obama and Shirley Sherrod last week. Obama and pals engaged in another embarrassing exercise in political overreaction with the firing of Sherrod, an official with the Agriculture Department. The only question now is what's next — another Beer Summit? A meeting between Sherrod and Obama over a couple of cold ones at the White House Pub?
And it all began with a blogger. Andrew Breitbart posted a video on one of his blogs that showed Sherrod giving a speech to the NAACP (24 years ago! Do these bloggers ever sleep?). Sherrod, who is black, appears to be boasting that she once withheld aid from a farmer just because he was white. That's all Obama needed to see — a blogger's video. Within hours, the Obama administration fired her.
Then it was discovered that Breitbart had provided only part of the video, a neatly edited clip that left out the parts showing that Sherrod wasn't expressing racist sentiments at all; to the contrary, she was discussing a personal experience in which she learned to look past skin color herself. She became friends with the farmer and helped him to save his farm.
Two days after the dismissal, Obama — having now taken time to actually think about the issue — called Sherrod to apologize and offer her job back.
At this point we are forced to conclude that Obama and pals are slow learners. It was exactly a year ago that the president blundered the Louis Gates controversy. Gates, an Obama pal and black Harvard professor, was arrested by a white policeman, James Crowley, during a burglary investigation. The charges were dropped, but before the incident faded away Obama threw gas on the fire by saying the police had "acted stupidly."
Following an uproar, Obama backtracked by saying he should have used different language — French perhaps? — and then invited Crowley and Gates to the White House to discuss the situation over a beer.
Later, Obama called it all "a teachable moment," except he didn't learn a thing. Twice Obama has acted first, then asked questions later. Let's hope he doesn't have his finger on the button of a nuclear weapon next time he acts prematurely.
But as much as Obama deserves the public criticism, is it fair that Breitbart doesn't really have to answer to anyone for posting video that was clearly taken out of context?
Bloggers, unlike employees of newspapers and electronic news media, aren't held to any standard of ethics. There is no editor barking at them to get it right, to be fair, to be balanced, to separate fact from opinion (or fiction). They are their own bosses and their own editors, and they can write or say or show whatever they choose.
Breitbart may have knowingly posted a misleading video. Or maybe the video was provided to him in its modified state, in which case he should have checked its veracity.
It is reason enough for people to seek trusted news sources for their information, not freelancing bloggers. You never know what you're getting from them. Even the president fell into that trap.
Doug Robinson's column runs on Tuesdays. Please send e-mail to drob@desnews.com.