ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the start of the editorial production process - the journalists who orchestrate it. Journalists had two potential places in which to lay the blame - the company for using animals in medical research or the activists who had potentially put many lives at risk by poisoning a drink favoured by millions of children. The mainstream media sided with the company. The hedgehog and migraine stories illustrate an important point about most journalists - they are generalists. Journalists can be divided into many groups, but they generally all conform to H.L. Mencken's job spec, for a journalist: A pleasing manner, a little literary ability and a dash of rat-like cunning. Each of the three elements illustrates an important point about journalists. Columnists are an essential tool as a newspaper seeks to define its own character, and they often express the views of the readers in a very clear fashion.
