A Cover Letter I’d Love to Have the Guts to Write, and, Journalism Hasn’t Changed Much in 50 Years

Hunter S. Thompson wrote an incredible cover letter to accompany his application for a job with the Vancouver Sun in 1958.  You can read the full in all its glory here, but I offer this excerpt as evidence that journalism apparently hasn't changed much in 50 years:

The enclosed clippings should give you a rough idea of who I am. It's a year old, however, and I've changed a bit since it was written. I've taken some writing courses from Columbia in my spare time, learned a hell of a lot about the newspaper business, and developed a healthy contempt for journalism as a profession.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you're trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I'd like to work for you. 

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