SandBoxBlogs: Aspen Times "Back to my roots, to the place where I learned the most"

I wonder, in listening to John Colson reminisce with such heartfelt emotion, where it is that he lost his way?

Very little, to nothing as some would say, of the traits he instilled in himself back in the Cardinal days show up anywhere in his output while working for Swift Communications.  Worse, his lack of journalistic integrity that fails so abysmally pulling in fact from fiction and both sides to all stories for the PI and the Times has harmed far more lives, businesses, law enforcement activity and case trials than he has helped.

With such a resume as claimed in his column this week, one can only wonder what happened to John Colson along the way that changed him from what he 'used to be'?

Is that hole in the bucket widening for John?

It appears so.

John Colson:
"I went home last weekend to revel in an atmosphere that was part past, part present and entirely aimed at the future of journalism in our benighted nation.

Which is to say I went back to Madison, Wis., the town where I grew up, for the 120th birthday party of The Daily Cardinal, the student newspaper where I learned for certain and forever that being a reporter was to be my life.

The Cardinal, with the bird itself as its emblem, was and is a unique institution, the sixth-oldest campus paper in the nation.....

.....I learned, at the Cardinal, about everything from the democratic ideals that kept the Cardinal going to deeply held certitudes about the role of journalists in this madcap world.

I learned about the technical aspects of the journalistic business and about how my words went from my brain to my fingers on the keyboard to the typesetting department and the press.
I learned about the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and how it is used and abused every day.

I learned about the perfidy of large corporations, which even then were beginning to buy up small newspapers in a spreading contagion of monopoly newsmongering that continues to this day.

I learned how to ask questions that interviewees really did not want to answer and how to dig into public records to ferret out the secrets that these interviewees tried to hide.

I learned that the hardships endured by people often told a more complete story than the press releases and carefully choreographed half-truths of the official government and corporate worlds.

Yes, I learned how to be what I am at that spunky little paper, and I am grateful to The Daily Cardinal and the culture it embodied in ways I can never fully express or explain..."
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"Unapologetically pursuing and tracking patterns within the news others make since 2010."