Remembering auto writer Jerry Flint

Outgoing Forbes editor William Baldwin writes Monday about longtime Forbes auto writer Jerry Flint, who died this weekend at the age of 79 after suffering a stroke.

Baldwin writes, “One of his notions was that journalists, at least the sort that ruled the newsrooms of big newspapers a few decades ago, were too full of themselves. They wrapped themselves in a mantle of objectivity by attributing views to ‘industry observers’ or other murky sources. If you’ve got the story wrong, that kind of attribution isn’t going to make it right.

“The rules of newspaper journalism had writers beating around the bush with such declarations as ‘In automobile circles, it is whispered that … ‘ Jerry once satirized this kind of mealy mouthed reporting by drawing chalk circles on the floor of a car company men’s room, standing on them and whispering some observation about where the industry was headed. ‘Now I can say that this is being whispered in automobile circles,’ he explained.

“Today the profession has gone too far in the other direction, with breezy bloggers handing down pronouncements unsupported by any original reporting at all. Jerry had it right: First get the facts, and then you can take the marbles out of your mouth.”

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