Listen to a reporter's opinion? Not a chance.

Tiger Woods did not win the Masters this year. However, he gave it an amazing run and pulled even with leader Ian McElroy in Sunday’s early going, before ultimately being overtaken and finishing fourth.

I mention it because, had you listened to AP reporter Tim Dahlberg and the countless mainstream outlets that carried him (including Forbes here), you’d have believed that Tiger was out of contention after Saturday’s round.

He’s as done as some of the patrons who baked for hours in the Georgia sun to catch a glimpse of him. There will be no fifth green jacket on Sunday, even if Woods is the last one to figure that out.

Mocking a fan who had told Woods, “You’re in this, Tiger!”, Dahlberg concluded his Saturday article:

Not a chance.

This is Exhibit A of why the mainstream press is dying a well-deserved death.

To borrow a line: Those who can do; those who can’t become reporters.

I’ve long been convinced that a reporter is essentially a well-rounded idiot–someone who knows enough to fool the crowd, but not enough to fool anyone who knows what he’s talking about.

In my own areas of modest expertise–poker and aviation–I often gag at what passes for reportage in the mainstream press. They often get things flat wrong, and even when the facts are correct, it’s clear that the reporter still doesn’t “get it.” (Incidentally I’m watching Suze Orman fool a starry-eyed crowd on PBS right now.)

It’s likely the same in your area(s) of expertise. And yet, for every Tiger who dedicates his life to excelling at something, there are a thousand critics/reporters/fans who snicker at every failing, and pretend a knowledge that masks a deep, vacuous cavity in their own being.

I didn’t really like Tiger Woods yesterday. Today I recognize he’s a thousand times the man that some douche writer for AP is.

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