a/ Thesis:

I saw a Wash­ing­ton Post head­line the other day, “Who’s No. 2? Obama Keeps Every­body Guess­ing.” No—the “every­body” in that con­struc­tion is you. Imag­ine if you were cov­er­ing the base­ball play­offs and you wrote that there was mas­sive spec­u­la­tion about who was going to win. It’s man­i­festly moronic because you’re writ­ing about a sched­uled event that is going to take place on a known time­line. You’re con­tribut­ing noth­ing. It’s the oppo­site of news; any useful public infor­ma­tion is entirely missing.

(Chris Lehmann, in an inter­view with Ken Sil­ver­stein at Harper’s)

b/ Proof: