^ F-Line, you’re getting yourself really worked up over nothing here... I’d bet that >9/10 people who read this article will walk away thinking “cool, that’s a group that’s making positive change through talent, passion, and a lot of hard work.” The generational angle certainly isn’t the main takeaway of the piece, and I bet that it hardly even makes most people’s radar.
But you read the article and your takeaway is, basically, “trash generational warfare”?
There's no need to cherry-pick a bunch of widely-separated random words from my post and fake a "trash generational warfare" quote out of it, nor describe imaginary worked-up body language and spittle that last I checked no secret webcam is recording for the Interwebs' viewing as I type. If you aim to credibly argue that I'm over-implying the intent in my posts...
try doing it without leaning hard on the same infraction in yours.
No, the generational angle wasn't the main takeaway. It did, however, read disjointedly like the generational framing was a forced editorial decision after the fact to retrofit a near-total unrelated story around Millennials. I'm not the only one who saw that; there were a
lot of online comments echoing that sentiment (whatever grains of salt one may grant to a given commenting venue). I don't think the act of pointing out that a framing exists and that for X, Y, Z reasons it's irrelevant/askew to the actual reporting subject means taking an automatic flying leap to crazytown histrionics of pure
feeeeeelings. If that were true then AB has a lot to apologize for from the seventh circle of crazytown hell re: large quantities of what passes for media critique in the Dev forum.
The "millennials" hashtag is sitting right bloody there at the bottom of the article page, and that's the tag this article got its main Twitter push under. That's why Politico is so dogged about pitching to canned themes, even as they go upsteam trying to class it up with more in-depth longform articles. Hashtag-pushing is their business M.O; it's why they're a profitable online media powerhouse in a generally unfavorable media biz climate. Let's face it, #transponerd doesn't draw as many eyeballs as #millennials...so they're gonna do whatever cosmetic surgery on the lede form-fits it to draw eyeballs, hell or high water. You know that--explicitly or subliminally--by seeing the name "Politico" on the masthead. This is what they do. It does mean you still must filter their more useful reporting through a "Note to self: this is Politico" lens, because the single-mindedness of their editorial theme-fitting does get in the way of journalistic practice. By-design.
This article was pretty middle-of-road by that standard. They've both published dumptrucks more paint-by-numbers dreck and produced more immaculate straight-on original reporting than this example. They're a big and prolific enough outlet to have a very broad spread. Also, it speaks volumes about how compelling a case TransitMatters is that the real grist of the story managed to shine through despite the editorial transparentness of the forced lede. It's possible to fully acknowledge all that was interesting about the story and still feel like the piece couldn't stay nearly enough out of its own way pushing a theme totally irrelevant-to-topic.
And...as I said in the last post, the fact that a major outlet like Politico published it at all will encourage more national attention and more longform reporting by other outfits that aren't as limited by the peculiarities of their own house style. That is a Good Thing™ in the end, no?