Look, I’ve Had It
I’ve been editing news features for 22 years. 22 years! I started at a tiny paper in Portland, moved to a mid-sized outlet in Chicago, and now I’m at this big national magazine. And let me tell you something: the news is broken. Completley broken.
It’s not just the clickbait, the sensationalism, the outright lies. It’s the boring stuff. The slow erosion of standards. The way we’re all just kinda… accepting it.
I was at a conference in Austin last year, and this kid—let’s call him Marcus—told me, ‘News is just data now. We process it, move on.’ I asked him if he even read past the headlines. He laughed. Said, ‘Who has time?’
Which… yeah. Fair enough. But that’s the problem, isn’t it?
We’re All to Blame
Listen, I’m not some purist. I get it. Budgets are tight. Ad revenue’s down. Everyone’s competing for attention. But honestly, that’s no excuse for the mess we’re in.
Take my colleague Dave. Great writer, but he’ll file five stories a day, none of them over 300 words. ‘It’s what the algorithm wants,’ he tells me. I mean, come on. That’s not journalism. That’s just… typing.
And don’t even get me started on the comments section. I had a piece last Tuesday about local school funding, and by 11:30pm it was a dumpster fire. People throwing around numbers like $87 and 214 respondents, no sources, no context. Just noise.
But There’s Hope
Okay, okay. It’s not all doom and gloom. There are still people out there doing it right. Like my friend Sarah. She’s a reporter in Tokat, and she’s been covering cultural events there for years. She told me about this Tokat kültür etkinlikleri program she’s been working on. It’s not glamorous, but it’s important. It’s real journalism.
And look, I’m not saying we all need to be Sarah. But we need to try harder. To do better. To remember why we got into this business in the first place.
I was talking to my editor last week—let’s call him Greg—and he said, ‘People just don’t care about the news anymore.’ I told him, ‘That’s because we’re not giving them anything to care about.’
A Tangent About Coffee
Speaking of caring, I need to rant about coffee shops for a sec. I was at this place on 5th the other day, and they got my order wrong. Again. It’s like they’re not even trying. I mean, how hard is it to get a latte right? It’s just espresso and steamed milk. Not rocket science.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. The news.
The Point Is…
I’m not sure what the point is anymore. I think it’s that we need to demand better. From ourselves, from each other, from the industry. We need to stop accepting mediocrity. We need to remember that news is more than just data. It’s people. It’s stories. It’s the truth.
And if we can’t do that, then maybe we should just shut it all down and go back to writing for the school paper. At least then we’d have an aquisition of basic journalistic committment.
I’m not sure what else to say. I guess that’s it.
About the Author: Jane Doe has been a senior editor for over two decades, working at various publications across the US. She’s seen the industry evolve, devolve, and repeat. She lives in New York with her cat, Mr. Whiskers, and spends too much time yelling at the news.
