I think you might even qualify as a doctor of cynical journalism, which is, what, a D.C.J.? Or a doctor of philosophy in cynical journalism — Ph.D. in C.J.? The important point is lots of extraneous letters after your name.

Liz

I didn’t mean to imply that I had a degree in cynical journalism, although I am doing some independent study (okay, I’m watching The Daily Show).

No, not at all. Let’s do a little media analysis:

CBS2 may have interviewed the nice man for half an hour, for all we know. They used two discontiguous sentences.

It’s entirely possible that Drawe spoke long and eloquently about the positive value of bringing an underserved demographic into the library.

The reporter may have asked, “But isn’t there anything that concerns you about these books?”

Drawe’s inflection on “only” supoports this hypothesis:

Drawe: “My only concern would be the influence it could have.”

At this point the video shifts to a book cover, then back to Drawe. Why? To hide a cut. You can tell: The pause between sentences sounds wrong. And what follows is clearly a sentence fragment.

Drawe: “The street problems, the prostitution….um…some of the glamorousness that these books try to promote.”

The newsies came to the library with the story already written. They then sat the librarian down and kept him talking until he uttered a few words that could be strung together to support that story.

Andrew Rothman
Cynical Journalism Graduate