update on the Thompson paper

I'm having a hell of a time concentrating. Aside from the pitched excitement of flying to Pittsburgh Tuesday, and the constant distraction of guitars winking at me, I'm having some difficulty taking seriously the idea that I'm taking this idea seriously. After all, not only am I about to go to an academic conference and propose that people concerned about journalism and the social construction of reality should pay attention to a known drug-addled freak who never met a rule of journalism he didn't flaunt, and not only am I going to propose that Thompson's writing should be considered a better model of journalism than mainstream "objective" journalism, and not only am I going to lambaste academic/ethical critics of journalism for legitimating what boils down to a self-serving ideololgy - not only that, but I'm thinking I'll relate that interpretation of the professional journalism establishement to the professional academic establishment.

As these various ideas have been swirling in my head, and I've been muttering about them, Lauren has asked a couple times, "Is this still what your abstract said the paper was about?" I'd been saying yes, and talking through how it would fit the abstract, which was about the ideology of objectivity and Thompson's counter-model of expressly subjective journalism. But the last time she asked, I think I said something like "I don't know. Maybe. I'm not sure it really matters."

That's true, in fact: I'm in. No one will stop me, shout me down, or come after me with a big hook. At worst, they'll talk about me in ugly tones in the hotel bar. What the hell. I've had worse.

Today I wrote a couple pages, setting up the question of whether Thompson's work can be thought of as journalism, and discussing briefly some critical accounts of Thompson's approach and the notion of objectivity, and then a little more on the origin of the standard of objectivity.

So who knows? I've got a couple more days to work on this before we split. I hope to have the paper done, but frankly, it'd be okay if I'm still writing it during the next week. I know what I need to do, if I continue to intend to do what I've skecthed out here.

Is it philosophy? Is it academic? Is it valid? Hell if I know. But there's still something in my head that's bugged by these questions. Too highly trained, I guess.