Dennis Hastert is a Democrat. (according to Fox/Yahoo/AP)

[nadinbrzezinski]

148. Nope. You would be wrong

Many working journalist did not go to journalism school, but have English, history, political science degrees. Some come from law, a few from law enforcement. The skills to find crap are the same whether you are a trained historian, a lawyer, or a reporter.

Yes, some folks go and get a degree in journalism, but you would be shocked to learn how much of this is actually on the job training with later education in seminars etcetera.

And yes job requirements tend to read journalism or equivalent experience.

And things like this very procedural story are indeed written by the junior staff at most news rooms, including the AP, and checked by the assignment editor. At times by the area editor, in this case politics beat, editor.

Why at times breaking news has a paragraph and developing. Reporters might know more, but there are the fact checkers and editors who have to go through it. Which is why, when people tried to burn the central door of the national palace in Mexico City we were able to scoop the big boys. I got sources in Mexico City and we saw it on the stream. So a few tweets we had the same facts the AP and CNN ran with 12 or so hours later, never mind they had... Photogs and camera people at the zocalo.

Though they did get better photos.

We don't have those many layers, which is both good and bad. We can break faster, but damn it we have to be damn sure of the facts.

Of course we do a lot of policy, which is far from breaking news. This beat, as it were, is not done by junior reporters either.