The promise of journalism
As a New York theater critic, Frank Rich earned the title “the Butcher of Broadway.” And as a political columnist, he has left American politicians only slightly less cowed. But when asked to speak on the state of investigative journalism in the Internet age, the feared and respected opinion-maker chose to focus on the positive. “Some journalistic institutions will suffer, and many already have,” the departing New York Times op-ed columnist said Monday (March 7) at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum. “But it’s the history of modern communications that the most apocalyptic predictions of doom — a feature of every period of traumatic technological change — don’t come true.” Rich was at Harvard to receive the 2011 Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism, sponsored by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Much like his regular Sunday columns, which search for larger narratives amid the 24-hour...