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Quill poses 10 questions to people with some of the coolest jobs in journalism
Jack Shafer has been called everything from a school monitor to one half of a Rock 'em Sock 'em Robot. But the self-professed news junkie tackles media criticism like a scientist, encouraging more skepticism, specificity and data in reporting.
1 Q: How did you get into journalism?
I studied communication, English and mathematics at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. I would've been a math major, but I was working hard to get As and Bs, and math majors didn't have to work hard for those grades. I have no doubts that I could turn really good writers into B students in calculus. The two thought processes are not alien. In proving mathematics, you're building a case step by step. If you Sub up a step, people will call you out. I think that's true in journalism as well, though I don't think I could turn math majors into journalists.
I got into journalism as a freelancer in Los Angeles when I started freelancing for alternative weeklies and a political magazine called the Libertarian Review. The minute I had any success, I left the country to travel. When I came back I went to Inquiry, which is now defunct and that's what brought me to Washington, D.C. When I started writing, I realized I had something to say that I didn't think anyone else was saying.
2 Q: How did you become a media critic?
Inquiry magazine folded in 1984. So I freelancing, writing a lot about drugs. Some of my first best stories were revisionist accounts of the war on drugs. In the summer of '85, I became editor of the alternative weekly Washington City Paper. I tried to hire someone as press critic, but no one would do it because they thought it would end their chance at working at The Washington Post. I had no aspirations to work at The Washington Post so I decided to be the press critic. (The Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive now owns Slate.)
3 Q: Slate just passed a milestone - 10...