Clear-eyed advice from Malcolm Gladwell

Here's some food for thought from one of The New Yorker's star writers, Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers. He's become famous for his ability to spot fresh stories for lay readers in the social sciences and put his unique spin on them. A Time magazine interviewer asked Gladwell in the Oct. 20th issue what single bit of advice he might offer to young journalists. His answer:

The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say.

He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.

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