Welcome to Strawberry Fields

Back in the days when I wrote features for the Washington Post, my editor was a relentless task-master.  The opening paragraph had to identify the old standbys: who, what, where, when and why. The byline consisted of one name only: mine. And I had to identify everyone I quoted by name and connection to the story.

But that was then, before the dummies took over. In today's Wall Street Journal, the bylines of four of the five front page stories carry either three or four names. WTF? What the heck are they all doing -- looking up words in a thesaurus? And many of the quotes are attributed to "people with knowledge of the situation" and "someone in the room at the time."

John Lennon foresaw this murky future years ago in his song, "Strawberry Fields Forever": 

"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.

It's getting hard to be someone, but it all works out

Nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about."