From:  Hugh Fitzgerald

To:     New Big Bosses At Newsweek

CC:     Sidney Harman

 I need a job. I need money.* And you have, dear Newsweek, apparently a need for some additions to your staff.   I notice, for example, that  Mr. Fareed Zakaria, he of the unsettling skull-beneath-the-skin mien,  a fan of Hamas party tricks, a man whose resistible rise took place largely at Newsweek, though now he has gone to both the Lesser Screen and to luciferian Time, where his misleading and dangerous  apologetics for islam, insufficientily recognized and understood, will be welcomed by Bobby Ghosh and others already ensconced at that magazine so celebrated, in recent decades, for its utter incomprehension of the Middle East and its palpable want of sympathy for Israel.

Here's an idea. Instead of relying on resumes, and who knows whom, and who recommends whom, and who already has a name, whatever that may mean in the degradation-of-the-democratic-dogma dog days we apparently are condemend to forever endure, why not actually give a test relevant to the application of any would-be commentator on men, and events, and what connects that historical hip bone to that historical thigh bone: that  is, a test of general knowledge, and a test of rapidity and vivacity of expression.

Make the test exactly the same for all applicants. Put each of them in a separate room. Hand to each of them the same three lists, containing the same five subjects, on which they are to write whatever they think most important for readers to know. And they are to complete this written examination in five hours, on computers limited to word-processing. No Internet. No outside connections of any kind. No LIfelines of any kind. No Fifty-fifty, no Phone-A-Friend, no Ask-the-Audience, nothing. Just the bleak screen, and the teeming brain to be gleaned. Everyone is on his lonesome.

Perhaps  a few examples of what I have in mind would help.

Okay, here are some possible lists:

One would consist of five disparate topics, testing  general knowledge :  Ibadiyya Islam,  the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, homozygous co-deletion, Russian formalism, verlan.

Another might consist of five placenames: Alexandretta, Baluchistan, Birobidzhan, Sakhalin, Xinjiang.

Another list might consist of five proper names: Oriana Fallaci, Cees Nooteboom, Alain Finkielkraut, Tatyana Tolstaya, Jacques Ellul.

And there should be -- very important, this -- a list of five questions on American history: Governor Andros, George Whitfield, Mugwumps, the Mauve Decade, Clear It With Sidney.

Applicants would  be asked to write whatever they think most significant about those people, places, things, and to make some connection between them,and the men and events one would be reporting on today.

Let those applicants descant, and yet again descant, on these assigned but temporarily supreme themes.

Then, once the written part of the examination is over, call them in for the viva voce. See how well, how convincingly, how attractively, they express themselves. Anyone who does what Tom Friedman does when he appears on Charlie Rose, holding up his hands with two fingers extended on each to offer a visual "quote-unquote" is grounds for immediate failure.

Imagine if such tests had been used by, say, the New York Times in choosing its columnists. Then  Kristof and Friedman would never have gotten in the door. allowed to presume and pronounce on matters of moment, of which they know so little, and to confuse and mislead so many. The world would have been a better, because better-informed, place.

Yes, we prate about a meritocracy. And in many professional fields, there are tests to weed out the ignorant and the idiots. A certain minimum level of knowledge, and of verbal facility, should be required for journalists. Such tests are not uncommon in Europe. Why not here? 

Yes, I know. One more thing.  I've already alluded to it.

Whatever happens, You've got to clear it with Sidney.

So do it already. Show him this posting, and include, printed out, the previous  posting "Seeking Employment" to which a link is given in the first sentence of this posting.

He's got a good sense of humor. He's got a brain. I can tell. He might not dismiss this out of hand. I think he might give it a whirl, or something close to a whirl.

_________________________________________________

*Rebecca Bynum wishes me to make clear that both this and the previous related posting have nothing to do with NER, nor with my posting here, which will continue exactly as before. It would be nice, however, in regard to NER, if what is largely now a labor of love could become something else. "Love in a hut, with water and a crust,  Is-Love, forgive us!-cinders, ashes, dust." Just a line from Lamia that I find it difficult to unremember. The old Funes-el-Memorioso problem.