"journalists munching nuances like peanuts"

I think the regular journalist resents people not playing by his/her strict rules regarding subjectivity and also resents people who have a skill he/she doesn't being called journalists too. Or at least whatever skill there is in strictly factual subjective reporting is buried by itself.

I don't think anyone gets het up about Wolfe being called a journalist anymore. I think it's more like, Wolfe and his presumptive heirs getting het up about bloggers being called journalists. Or something like that. Most of the journalism students I went to college with wanted to be nothing but Wolfe, Capote and Hunter S. Thompson. (You can judge the results for yourself on any magazine rack.)

"strict rules regarding subjectivity" haha you mean "you MUST have an opinion" at least in re the British Isles

peanuts are tasty

btw the Baghdad Blogger gave a presentation to our class yesterday!! he said he'd never want to be a journalist, doesn't know why anyone would want to do it; he characterized the Baghdad press crew as either poolside loafers travelling in their own little herd whenever they heard about an explosion somewhere, or "crash n burners" who actually followed up stories behind the backs of official minders - often this meant getting as close to the front lines as possible, in the heat of firefights - and were subsequently threatened or expelled from the country. "in the neighborhood, at the movies, at the bar, or on the corner, we would talk with aid workers and people from NGOs about our lives... how come we never saw any journalists around?"

and he answered himself "because they were back at the hotel drinking beer, or if they DID go out into the neighborhood they travelled in armoured convoys with flak-jackets on; you walk around like that you're going to get things thrown at you"

(tracer is he indie?)

I hope you mean top sci-fi loonie Gene Wolfe.

mark he's actually a very interesting case; he has become this cause celebre, a "real voice of Iraq," and this is quite true, but he is one very particular kind of voice in Iraq. in his case, the voice of liberal elites (also he's Catholic, lived outside the country for seven years of the last decade, got an American education, listens to American music, his mom loves "Pop Idol," he's extremely excited about American brands of liquor finally becoming available in Baghdad). he reads the Guardian and NY Times websites every day, so it can be hard to untangle his views about things from what we take as the conventional wisdom already - and that the two jive with each other makes him a great fit for Western readers. none of this takes away from his value, which is to provide the kind of run-of-the-mill stuff totally ignored by journalists: cool old mosques no one was ever allowed to visit before; what it's like to go buy a bottle of wine on the corner; arguments in the car with his friend about how to fix things; his mom talking about what it was like to get raided by the American army-cops right in the middle of watching... Pop Idol

Does "New Journalism" just mean "writing a column?"

that's a pretty lame quote from a "professional writer".