I think I'm going to stop writing this blog, at least for the time being.

I've always been torn between wanting to be a journalist and wanting to be an academic. I suppose this blog has been written with the former in mind more than the latter. But there have always been things about journalism as a profession that bother me, chief among them what seems to be a rewarding of scandalousness and counterintuitiveness over seriousness and correctness. Granted, not all journalists do this, nor do all journalistic outlets encourage it. There are a lot of wonderful writers out there, as well as some excellent magazines and newspapers. Beyond that, I really don't mean to sound like those stuffy communications scholars that spend their lives chiding people for not approaching politics in a serious and rational manner. But the professional incentives of a good deal of journalism have bothered me from time to time. I went to a youth journalism conference over the summer and one of the speakers flatly said that when faced with a truly insightful, well-researched, completely correct piece of writing, it's hard to find anything to add to it. Thus, it's hard to link to it from a blog or cite it in an op-ed column. But if someone writes something completely stupid and outlandish? Well, that you can link to and endlessly reference because it can start a conversation, albeit often a petty one. Likewise, catching a prominent person say something insulting about another prominent person will get far more coverage than decades of serious thinking from that same individual.

The Samantha Power "monster" incident comes at a somewhat appropriate time, then. I basically agree with Noam Scheiber's take on the merits of the issue. Quite simply, the journalist in question shouldn't have quoted Power as a matter of basic courtesy. The comment she made was clearly an off-handed mistake (which she immediately realized as such), not some deeply thought-out declaration. More than that, there was no serious justification for publishing it. It wasn't about policy or anything that actually might effect the citizenry. It was in no way in the public interest. No, the sole purpose in printing the quote was to draw attention to the newspaper and provide fifteen minutes of fame to the writer. It worked because, as I said, professional journalism tends to reward scandal over seriousness.

Samantha Power is a pretty remarkable person and this sort of thing demeans her life of accomplishments. Her work on genocide has been vastly influential in bringing Sudan in particular into the mainstream of liberal foreign policy discourse. She even won a Pulitzer Prize for it. But now, for most people who weren't previously familiar with her name, she's just that Obama advisor who called Hillary Clinton a "monster."

Anyway, bringing this back to my own situation, here's what's happening: Last semester I applied for Ph.D. programs and I recently learned I was accepted by a couple of them. I plan to accept one of the offers and spend the next five or six years pursuing graduate study. At some point I would love to do some journalistic writing in addition to my academic work. But while in the past I was torn between the journalism vs. academia decision, I've come to realize I'm very happy pursuing the academic route. I'm currently growing weary of the daily back-and-forth between the Democratic campaigns. While I'm sure this primary season will eventually provide excellent fodder for journal articles and conference presentations, for now I'm going to stop obsessing over the day-to-day for the sake of my sanity, not to mention so I can finish writing my thesis and graduate.