"The Reporter's Worldview"

Ezra Klein nails one of the problems of contemporary journalism (emphasis mine):

Oddly enough, it's not really considered reporting to read Anthony Cordesman's latest report on Iraq. It is considered reporting to call Anthony Cordesman on the phone and ask him what he thinks. It's not considered reporting to read through Barack Obama's speeches on nuclear proliferation and emerge with a coherent understanding of his stated policies. It is considered reporting to land an interview with Barack Obama and ask him what he thinks, and it would be considered ace reporting -- A1 level reporting -- to unearth a copy of Obama's college thesis on nuclear non-proliferation and publish his conclusions....

In part, this is due to the competitive pressures of journalism. The journalist's job, in theory, is to learn things that other people can't learn, so work conducted largely by analyzing documents and information in the public domain isn't journalism...

An underlying worldview in journalism (is): That politicians are all bullshit artists, that politics is all artifice, and the reporter's job is to cynically expose it as such and then peer behind the curtain to uncover the moments of spontaneity and honesty. Within this rubric for journalism, there's no reason to read speeches or policy plans or interview transcripts, no reason to stick in the public domain because it's all crap anyway. Better to try and trigger moments of surprise -- when truth might slip through the cracks created by shock -- then take seriously a politician's stated plans for the country.

This is partially because editors consider it "lazy" to just rely on information in the public domain. Adam Nagourney could easily just rewrite Obama's policy papers, stripping them of glittering generalities and bureaucratic BS, call one or two outside experts, then go take a long lunch. I have no doubt he would prefer to do this. But he also feels the need to show editors he is working. So he has to call Obama's press office and ask them to put him in touch with Obama's policy advisers and because most press officers are fucking useless (the most underreportered story ever, because reporters can't afford to piss them off), he has to sit around and wait 3 hours for them to get back to him, while repeatedly telling his editors he has "calls in" and doing nothing.

Basically, aggressively pursuing stuff like Obama's college thesis also makes it look like a reporter is working hard. Note: if an editor thinks a reporter is not working hard, he will undoubtedly assign the reporter a story idea the editor has. The idea will be either a. dumb or b. impossible to report. There is nothing reporters hate more than story ideas editors come up with.