Right-wingers, Ben Affleck and Southern girls

A few quotes to ponder as we head into the weekend:

“Oh, well. When the Feds surround my place for the big shootout, I hope my home gets described as a ‘compound’ just before it goes up in smoke. Cool.” –Mark Steyn, National Review Online, in response to a Department of Homeland Security report warning of dangerous right-wing extremist activity.

“Make no mistake, dear readers, we are living under tyranny. Especially to those who voted for Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress, you are living in denial if you believe otherwise. This is not hyperbole.” — The Sarasota Observer, in an article un-hyperbolically titled “Live Free or Die.”

“For now, though, one can’t help but note that these ‘conservatives’ seem so very angry about a federal government program designed to do nothing other than protect the glorious Homeland from Terrorists.  And we know that this is the purpose of the DHS program because that’s what the Government said its purpose is.  So what else is there to know?  That’s the lesson we all learned over the last eight years:  Bush said that all of his secret surveillance programs were only directed at Al Qaeda, so how can anyone say otherwise?” — Glenn Greenwald, Slate, in response to right-wing criticism of the Department of Homeland Security

Is journalism school necessary?

Who the hell is enrolling in journalism school? That’s the questioned posed recently by Sarah Lacy, upon learning that enrollment in J-schools is on the rise.

To understand the puzzlement behind Lacy’s query, it helps to understand her background. Lacy, who has covered business news for  the past 10 years, writes for BusinessWeek and Tech Ticker.  But she didn’t get to where she is taking classes on media theory or news writing or journalistic ethics:

I like to joke that I’m “unqualified” to do my job. But I think it was precisely that total lack of journalism training that gave me an edge. I never worked the cops-and-courts beat. I don’t know how to write an inverted pyramid story or even really what that is. I do know how to write for different platforms, be scrappy and break news. I’ve had zero important alum connections and never got an internship at a big daily. And, in hindsight, that’s probably the greatest stroke of luck I could have had.

I admire Lacy’s ability to succeed without formal training, but I can personally attest that I probably wouldn’t haven’t gained the experience I have without J-school as a conduit and connection-builder.