London Banter - View Single Post - What does it take to be a Transport Correspondent?

Bruce[_2_] · April 22nd 11, 12:29 AM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote:
As a tube driver, and knowing what was what and background information to
many things (as any tube staff would), I soon came to realise that most
stuff reported about the tube / strikes / whatever was at best misleading
or inadequate or at worse, downright lies. As a consequence, I normally
treat any newspaper as a comic on the basis that most of what is printed
is irrelevant or rubbish!

I agree. Writing good articles about the railway needs a strong grasp
of a wide variety of technologies that are constantly being changed,
improved and developed.

It is asking an awful lot of a non-technical journalist for them to
possess the specialist knowledge that would be need to keep abreast of
all these changes. The days of newspapers, TV and other media
employing specialist journalists to write about specialist technical
subjects is long gone, if it ever happened at all.