Live? Really? Here is what is in the crawler at the top of cnn.com at the moment:

"Helen Keller honored with statue at U.S. Capitol"

We live in a 24 hour news cycle, haven't you heard? Therefore there always has to be breaking news.

Somewhere in a graveyard in the southwest I picture my first journalism professor, Dick Hainey, churning in his grave. I am glad he didn't have to witness the state of the art now. He was from the old school to the max, when journalists were still respected and could make a difference. Now I'm not so sure, although the long article in the NY Times the other day about hamburger production gives me occasional hope. But the general outlook sucks. People believe what they want to believe and it's easy to find constant reinforcement. Whatever happened to objective statement of the facts? Comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable? Dead and gone as the falling leaves, I'm afraid.

I try to smile through everything. Dick Hainey was a maestro of the pithy phrase and I am smiling remembering some of them. "You've got to be aggressive in this business but don't go in a revolving door behind someone and try to come out in front." "When they look down at their shoes in all earnestness, check how scuffed they are." "If you mean 'said,' say said." Here's one he directed at me in the classroom in Fisk Hall, in response to my sophomoric rejoinder to his 'said' maxim, which was 'ejaculated.' "Beane, there's one in every class. You're the Joie Chitwood of the keyboard, jumping 100 feet into a damp cloth." You knew it had all been said before, like Louis Gossett's intro to the troops in "An Officer and a Gentleman." But it didn't detract from the impact.

I honestly think we were better off journalistically in the old days. There are some outlets you can still trust but even those are perceived by some as no more than launch pads for points of view. It's sad. We have lost something.

I have no idea why anyone even majors in journalism any more, other than a desire to be on television or the internet.