The metro columnist is dying. Not Bob Denver dying (well, unless you count Mike Royko), but William Safire dying. (Okay, bad example. He’s sans gig but still doesn’t shut up.)
Without forcing us to come up with an analogical equivalent, just understand this: throughout the country, metro columnists are either disappearing from newspapers or chugging on undetermined.
CJR’s Steve Twomey thinks so, anyway. And, well, he should, especially after he “waded through 212 columns by 60 metro columnists at 40 newspapers, reading everybody at least three times. Then I read 95 additional columns by those who seemed good, to make sure they were.”
Whew, we’re exhausted just reading about it. But that’s good news, at least for folks like us, because it gives Twomey – aside from a smirk-worthy sirname – quite a bit of authority when he says things like this:
However good the genre might have been, a killer monotony has descended upon it. Too often, we get tepid yarns any reporter could have legally written. Or riffs on the columnist????????s cable bill, kids, or mail. Or lectures on wonky stuff better left to the editorial page. (Actual recent example from a column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: ???????Audits of city authorities will have to stop or the Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority will cost the state millions.???????) There????????s no energy. No effort is expended to make today????????s column different in tone or approach from any other. There are bloggers who can pen more creative stuff.
Yes, thank you Steve! We were waiting for the appropriate time to pimp our for-hire services. And don’t let our embarrassingly limited working knowledge of New York stop you from signing us.