If you buy a flute...

There's an old saying among photographers -- if you buy a flute, you own a flute, but if you buy a camera you're a photographer.

The same rule seems to apply to journalists. Witness Jeff/Jim -- no apparent training or past practice but he gets equal footing with those genuinely ink-stained types that work for marginal publications like the Washington Post. By Jeff/Jim journalism standards, I am a journalist, since I write for a (very) small circulation quarterly magazine. But we do actually have subscribers, print stuff on real paper, follow a more or less regular publication schedule, and have articles that contain original writing.

Then again, there's the mail order photography school that used to (maybe still does) publish a newsletter which any of its students could submit contributions to. That got you "press credentials" -- an official looking card that you could use to demonstrate that you were a working press photographer.

Journalism isn't alone in the cheapening of what constitutes credentials. This morning Matt Lauer was going to interview a six year old "historian." The kid is an historian, you see, because he's memorized a lot of facts about presidents. Setting aside the obvious question if interviewing a six year old while being paid millions of dollars makes you a journalist, one needs to remind Matt that there's a difference between history and chronicle, so that memorizing facts about presidents doesn't make you an historian. Nor does simply writing about the past. Doing history requires careful study, an ability to manage and interpret information, and a solid grasp of logic.

Later this week 60 Minutes will present us with a four year old "artist" who's splashes and drips have apparently been selling quite well, thank you. Why this constitutes news is beyond me but it does illustrate another old saw about a sucker being born every minute.

Pretenders have always been with us and I doubt we will get rid of them but we can at least not promote them. One would also hope that legitimate, practiced, journalists, historians and artists would stand up and contribute to the public discourse in ways that demonstrate a depth of knowledge and professionalism. This isn't new -- Emerson complained about "scribbling women" writing potboilers and asked why the "scholars" weren't playing a larger role in everyday life. (This wasn't altruism on Ralph Waldo's part -- the scribblers were competing with him for space in publications -- but his larger point holds true.)

We have a few -- Paul Krugman leads the list -- folks with real credentials and knowledge who are willing to put themselves out there with reasoned discourse. Unfortunately they're outnumbered by the Jim/Jeffs, Anne Coulters, and the scores of "senior fellows" with BA degrees that infest right wing think tanks who get helped along by the "MSM" in their pursuit of what passes for news when they're not interviewing six year olds.