It really doesn’t get any classier than this. Reading submissions from outstanding young reporters vying for the Livingston Prize convinced Quindlen that new voices needed to be heard:
The last bit of evidence arrived in the form of three binders of news clippings. Because all the submissions for the Livingston Awards have to come from reporters under the age of 35, looking at the dates of birth on the entry forms for the finalists was like a stroll through my own past.
This young man was born the year I graduated from college, that young woman just about the time I became a reporter at The New York Times, this one when I was covering city hall, that one when I was writing my first column.
Needless to say, this made me feel really old.
But my second response to reading over the stories was delight. They were so thoroughly reported, so well written. Whether local, national or international news, they were just what journalism ought to be. The next time anyone insists the business won’t survive I may bash him with one of these binders, which are heavy with hope for the future.
They also made me think again about my own future. These clippings thoroughly ratified a decision I began to make a year or so ago, that has led me here, to my last LAST WORD column for NEWSWEEK.
It’s a shame that someone as acutely perceptive as Quindlen recognizes the problem that far less acute pundits dismiss (yes, David Broder, ‘bulo means you) as jealousy or something.
It’s particularly glaring when this generational stall happens in the news business, which constantly remakes itself in the image and likeness of the world. And it is egregious when it happens in the small subset of the pundit class, which is supposed to take the nation’s temperature. It’s undeniable: America’s opinionators are too white and too gray. They do not reflect our diversity of ethnicity and race, gender and generation. They do not reflect the diversity of opinion, either, mainly because most are part of an echo chamber of received wisdom that takes place at restaurant tables in New York and Washington.
With the kind of talented reporters that Quindlen cites, journalism will survive and even flourish with or without newspapers. Or newsmagazines. The news deliverers are here. The new delivery system(s) will inevitably follow. People will read good work. Like Quindlen’s.