> Journos think they have everything all figured out before they even investigate. They just need to investigate enough information to slap it into their story

> Journos think they have everything all figured out before they even investigate. They just need to investigate enough information to slap it into their story as if they were a algorithm automatically writing a sports story from the game stats. That’s unfairly broad and in my experience, untrue. And to the extent it is true, I would argue that is largely because we have moved to a model that rewards journalism for writing the things people or publicists want to read, making it harder for investigative work that ruffles feathers and makes it challenging to even do the work of learning. And although I won’t argue that many, many journalists aren’t subject-matter experts in their beats, the good ones are. More to the point, many more are willing to become experts and talk to experts. And for what it’s with, “what’s the deal with [foo]” was my go-to question when working on big stories when my full-time job was a journalist. I’m a naturally curious person. I want to learn as much as I can about as many things as I can. And maybe I was lucky, but my editors certainly didn’t have a problem with me pursuing those stories — even if I wasn’t able to do as many of them as I would have liked.