First-rate newspapering on a ukelele?

"Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's St. Matthew Passion on a ukulele: The instrument is too crude for the work, for the audience and for the performer." -- Ben Bagdikian

Emeritus dean of the journalism school at the University of California Berkley, Ben Bagdikian has been a fierce critic of the corporate media for decades. Most local television news he characterizes as "giggle programs, where inane pleasantries bounced back and forth, in between which they say oh yes, there was an ax murder in San Jose."

And his opinion of local newspapers isn't any higher.

But what's that stuff about a ukelele?

Let's see.

First, Roy Smeck, a vaudville artist known as the "wizard of strings," plays "Tiger Rag," a jazz standard of the early 1900s, on the uke:



Next, "Blute nur, du liebes Herz" from the St. Matthew Passion, with the Brandenburg Consort and soprano Emma Kirkby, conducted by Roy Goodman:



Nothing wrong with a uke, and nothing wrong with a Bach choir, either. They're just different things.