Old journalists telling jokes

YouTube has launched the YouTube Reporters' Center, with interviews from professional journalists giving tips to—and this is critical—everyone about how best to practice journalism.

Above, Bob Woodward, who you might know as a person who got at least one story right once, offers a story that suggests some practical tips on investigative journalism. The comments on the post are hilarious worthless non sequiturs ("The empowered fascist left is KILLING AMERICA"; "I'll remember to 'check my fucking work' when I'm writing about something I don't know shit about." [Woodward never uses the phase in his video]; "I FUCKED MY STEP SISTER IN THE ASS :D"), as per typical YouTube, since for some reason Google doesn't care about comment quality, but anyway listening to Woodward made me realize how sick of 'New vs. Old Media' stories I keep hearing and how much I actually care about and respect journalism.

There are at least a half-dozen practical tips that Woodward gives in the above video that any writer, from stupid online gadget copy-and-paster to investigative political blogger could stand to pick up. (Here's a hint for one: One of his sources called him.) The newspapers may die due to mismanagement, misdirected editorial efforts, and flagging public interest in hard news, but the biggest mistake new journalists—professional or citizen or any mix in between—could ever make is to think that the tools the old guard honed over decades should be left in the past.

YouTube Reporters' Center [YouTube]

(See also: The New New Journalism: Conversations with America's Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft, the best crash course in How To Do It I've ever read.)