Gen-X rant

[NullTuples]

I've noticed a trend in e-car adoption stories strewn over news media these last few years. A good summary would be the author saying, "I learned to give myself a mileage buffer when planning long trips". And then presenting that life lesson as something unique to their personal experience and growth as a person. This is not at all idiosyncratic to e-car stories, by the way. I'd not be surprised to come across a story titled, "How I learned to not stick my hand in a blender while it's running and why I now only order DoorDash".

Dear mainstream media,

Please bring back the scrappy, resourceful, world-weary journalists. The ones who have been poor. The ones who still are poor. The ones who are disabled, queer, Black, Brown and/or queer. The ones who have more experience than their readers at whatever it is they are reporting on. The storytellers with actual stories to tell that are not their own, and involve the world around them instead. Stories that are about other people. Please. It's what our society needs right now, not bored people of privilege who decided they want to try writing because Instagram & TikTok didn't pan out for them as influencers.

(I chose the title after I realized neither of our kids - or anyone else their age - has really been exposed to any other style of general journalism)

[Sympthsical]

1. My impression of a lot of current journalists

A lot of working from home, doing their job via e-mail, phone, and social media. Google for research. Generally cloistered, living in cities in a social bubble of people also living in the city with all the benefits (and drawbacks) that entails. They spend a lot of their time interacting with people who are more or less exactly like them.

They don't know what they don't know.

However, because they are journalists, there's a kind of unearned imprimatur about them. "I researched this story. I am now an expert in this field." No, you did the bare minimum to produce some print - something I do for various class papers on the regular. It's why so many journalists fall into that hole of, "Something happened to me that happens to millions of people unremarked on. I will now write a series about it!" Why? Because they're so excited they actually have relevant information that comes from real life knowledge and experience for a change.

I was reading this Wired article about Brandon Sanderson the other day. He's a fantasy writer, super popular and successful. Also a Mormon living in Utah. I've never read his writing and have no opinion about the man. Wired sent a writer from San Francisco out to Utah to do a profile on him.

Well! I came away not knowing very much about Sanderson, but I absolutely learned a lot about what a shitty, insulated, pretentious, know-nothing the author was. And his co-workers came off little better. Totally fascinating to watch someone that cloistered just totally baffled, resentful, and shitty about people unlike him.

Also, any kind of medical or science article. If you know even a little bit about the subject being discussed, reading articles on those topics is crazy painful. Like, did the writer do any research at all? Did they read past their own headline?

We need less people out of college with journalism degrees and more journalists and online writers with life experience and knowledge of the fields they're discussing. I can't not read shit nowadays without the most jaundiced of eyes. And I almost always find something not just kind of wrong - but bell-ringingly, "how did the editor not see this?" wrong.

The profession's a mess.

[Redleg]

2. But journalists do go and meet real Americans....

as long as they're Trump supporters eating at a rural diner somewhere in the midwest. And they report these MAGA utterances as though they reveal a larger truth about America as a whole.

[RobinA]

3. Just The Usual

lazy slop purveyed as "information" nowadays.

I used to work for Children & Youth Services. Shortly after I left there was a tragedy in a town near me (not where I worked) and CYS was getting the blame. I was furious. While CYS could have done better, the real problem was at the state level and effected way more people than the unfortunates involved in the happening situation. In fact, it was and remains a miracle that what happened doesn't happen more often. I actually wrote to the reporters involved and suggested that they look further than the low hanging fruit they were writing about. This was 20 years ago. At no time then or since has anyone ever gone further than the first two levels of responsibility when writing articles about periodic, usually fatal if they make the papers, CYS failures. It drives me crazy, because nothing ever changes if you are trying to solve the wrong problem.