Baseball and Journalism; or how Jon Stewart Gets It Right

Journalism and baseball are a lot alike. Thinking about baseball conjures up images of the New York Yankees, Hank Aaron or Cal Ripken. The gold standard in journalism brings to mind the New York Times, William Pulitzer or Walter Cronkite. The reality is, however, that for every Babe Ruth or Ted Williams, there are and have been thousands of professional baseball players who we don’t remember because they weren’t that great. Journalism has also seen its share of its share of columnists and reporters come and go. There isn’t enough professional talent to suitably fill the 25 man rosters of all Major League Baseball team, which is why the Kansas City Royals’ bullpen gives up so many hits and runs. There isn’t enough professional talent to fill the ranks of the world’s newspapers and 24 hour cable networks, which is why the world of professional journalism couldn’t get to the bottom of some of this century’s major crises like the Bush Administration’s push for the war in Iraq or the global economic meltdown.

Too often, professional athletes are too concerned with endorsement deals and good public relations to concentrate on playing the game well. Too often, professional journalists are too concerned with making friends and contacts in high places to ask them the tough questions. Too often in baseball, otherwise talented players like Alex Rodriguez or Barry Bonds cheat to achieve the desired outcome by taking performance enhancing drugs and hormones. Too often in journalism, otherwise talented reporters resort to plagiarism or a questionable interpretation of fact to achieve their desired outcome.

The metaphor will only take us so far. In baseball, we cheer for a team because we love them and we want them to win for our own happiness. In journalism, we cheer for them to get it right not because of our recreational interest, but because the outcome of the events they report affect us all in very serious ways. In baseball, the playoffs come around once a year (normally) and allow players and teams the opportunity to rise to the occasion by through hard work, sacrifice and a little luck. In journalism, the stakes are always high, and the good journalist must always make ask the tough questions and make difficult decisions lest their failure lead to a crisis of catastrophic proportions.

This is a metaphor that Jon Stewart might appreciate. His recent “war of words” with Jim Cramer of CNBC was not meant to show that all journalists should have been able to predict the economic crisis. He did not, and never would have uttered the words “You should have seen this coming.” He meant to show that many journalists are too caught up in the vanity of their position to work hard and be good at what they do. Rather than acting as cheerleaders for the world of high finance or for the Bush administration, journalists should have taken their role as the “third column” seriously by working hard, asking tough questions, and never losing sight of the fact that their relative success or failure affects us in deeply important ways. Just as Jon Stewart has high expectations for his New York Mets, so too does he have high expectations for professional journalists. So its perfectly reasonable to expect Stewart to be disappointed when the Mets blow their chances at the playoffs, and just as reasonable to expect him to be disappointed when journalists don’t work hard enough to get it right. But perhaps we need to lower our expectations, because the world of journalism is filled with Zach Greinkes but it’s increasingly rare to find a Reggie Jackson to rise to the occasion.