Journalism is dead

Remember when reporters used to do things like ask questions and think?

Actually neither do I, but I remember when that was the ideal.


Jacksonville's firstcoastnews.com reports that Mr. Anthony Brown is close to having his car run on water. Brown explains that he splits "... the water from the oxygen from the hydrogen ..."

This is gibberish. Water IS hydrogen and oxygen. And yes, you can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, but you will ALWAYS use more energy to do so than you get back by burning the hydrogen. Second law of thermodynamics.

What gets me isn't Mr. Brown's being either a charlatan or self-deluded (the only two choices), it's that the reporter, Angela Williams, didn't bother to so much as wake up before writing it. A real journalist would have covered, for instance, a charlatan's looking for "investors" (suckers), but Ms. Williams is either utterly incompetent or simply very lazy.

(I'm compulsively fair: it's also possible that Ms. Williams' editor is looking for meaningless puff "human interest" pieces, which makes him the person deserving the abuse, not her.)

It's distressing.