The Oregonian’s Peter Bhatia wrote an excit­ing op-ed in the Sunday Oregonian. The 18,000-word spin piece is crammed with bull­shit, defen­sive­ness, over­con­fi­dence and pom­pos­ity, which I’ve high­lighted (via trans­lated excerpts) below.

“Quick back­ground: I am Peter Bhatia. (It’s pro­nounced BAH-tee-uh.) I grew up in Pullman, Wash., and went to col­lege at Stanford. I admit I am par­tial to schools that wear shades of red. I’ve worked at seven news­pa­pers over the past 35 years, mainly in the Northwest and Northern California. It is an incred­i­ble honor to lead the tal­ented staff of The Oregonian news­room and to be part of Publisher Chris Anderson’s lead­er­ship team at this com­pany, the old­est con­tin­u­ously oper­at­ing busi­ness in the state. The Oregonian, if you didn’t know, is older than the state of Oregon.

Lest you doubt my ster­ling cre­den­tials, I am Stanford-educated (please turn to D1 to see a pho­to­copy of my diploma). And, despite the fact that I have a pompous and irri­tat­ing way of express­ing myself, I — like you, peasant-reader — am a long-time res­i­dent of the Pacific Northwest. I hail from the hard-working, blue-collar town of Pullman, where I became immensely famil­iar with the prairie crick­ets and sister-fucking trailer trash who com­prise the read­er­ship core of regional newspapers.

“Much has been writ­ten and said about the chal­lenges fac­ing news­pa­pers in recent years, and there is no deny­ing that both the hor­ri­ble econ­omy of the past few years and rapidly chang­ing dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy have been hard on our indus­try. But if you take noth­ing else from this col­umn, please remem­ber this: The Oregonian is not going away.

We’ve taken quite a PR hit in the last few days. Bob Caldwell ended up in the Stony Lonesome, and I shit-canned a jour­nal­ist for con­tribut­ing to George Costanza’s favorite wack-off rag. Make no mis­take, though, this paper is still the Only Game in Town. Our read­ers are a cap­tive audi­ence, and they will always be a cap­tive audience.

“Many want to write off The Oregonian. That would be a mis­take, because we are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing essen­tial watch­dog and inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism on issues that mat­ter to you, and at a level of jour­nal­is­tic qual­ity that no other media out­let in the state can provide.

The Oregonian is an insti­tu­tion of beauty and truth. It is life, it is death…it is God. Naysayers who wor­ship at the throne of igno­rance and Robitussin will always try to drag us down. However, we Gods are made of stern stuff. We are nigh invulnerable.

“I would be the first to acknowl­edge we are less than per­fect in our work. Newspapers have always been human insti­tu­tions; mis­takes get made. I gri­mace daily at missed oppor­tu­ni­ties and obvi­ous mistakes.

Do you see this nose on my face? It’s not merely a nose for news. It’s a finely tuned, heav­ily sophis­ti­cated news-seeking appa­ra­tus. It con­sumes, digests and excretes news. Twenty four hours a day. The immen­sity of this task means that mis­takes are unavoidable.

“…I wouldn’t trade our staff for any­thing. They are a smart, ded­i­cated and deter­mined group of jour­nal­ists. Their work has made The Oregonian by far the dom­i­nant media out­let in the state, and with that, nat­u­rally, comes crit­i­cism of how we do our work. It’s only fair. But it’s also fair to point out that those who are our harsh­est crit­ics rely on the good work of our staff for their talk-show top­ics, blog posts or gen­eral rants. I’m not sure what they’d do with­out us.

Blogs are writ­ten by insignif­i­cant pif­fle mon­gers. I crush them like roaches tram­pled under­foot. Bloggers would be lost with­out the invit­ing tar­get that our gruff and ennobling wis­dom provides.

“One of the byprod­ucts of these dig­i­tal times is there are more and more jour­nal­is­tic entre­pre­neurs start­ing web­sites and other local news ven­tures that go to top­ics our staff might not. We think that’s great. The more jour­nal­ism the bet­ter, and we are look­ing for­ward to find­ing com­mon ground with those new ven­tures. But more on that another time.

Competition weak­ens our stran­gle­hold on the local news scene. I can assure you that I will step on the throat of any god­damn prairie cricket who attempts to steal our thunder.

Thank you for read­ing — this col­umn and the newspaper’s work.

This trite, patron­iz­ing bit of lec­tur­ing is meant to pla­cate a few impor­tant adver­tis­ers so that we do not lose their patron­age. Having said that, let it be known that I have reached the pin­na­cle of human achieve­ment. I am a news man at The Oregonian.

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