Whither Writering

Where a frog flung into hot water will immediately fight to get itself out, a frog sitting in cold water that slowly gets hotter and hotter will not.

As the heat incrementally increases, the frog sits and the causation of its demise is its refusal (or sensory oblivion) to recognize the need to move and save itself.

I observe this phenomenon in myself and my peers as we evolve chronologically. Our conversations have changed. We talk more about physical irritations and limitations. We observe the younger generation with a mixture of confusion and awe.

Why are they doing what they are doing that way? Or, more frequently, why are they doing what they are doing?

There is a delightfully delusional phase of life we all go through that my friend Diane calls the “Masters of the Universe” phase. It is that prime of life period which can last for a decade or two when you feel the world is your oyster.

You and your peers are in charge of running the world. You are the decision-makers now. Your word IS the law (carefully backed up by precedent and legislation). Your priorities win out over the priorities of the vulnerable, the disenfranchised, the malingerers, the elderly.

In short, you win out over any group that is not like you and yours.

I once harbored a belief that politicians were self-preserving and self-interested enough to work toward the public good. To make decisions that would benefit all of society and not just thin stripes of it or the members of their old fraternity.

I suppose that belief was painfully naive in hindsight. Although to be fair, Mr. Smith did go to Washington. So it turns out to be a funny thing about following the rules and acting in aid of the common good; it does actually benefit more people.

But combine that general sense of well-being with outrageous ambition and greed and pettiness and vengefulness and enough people start acting out that reality than that of Mr. Smith in Washington, well, the picture changes quite dramatically.

In fact, the picture begins to look a great deal like the times we are living in now. Like the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 20th century, change is apace. Or the dot.com boom of the late 20th century.

I was a career journalist. There were rules we followed to ensure our integrity was never opened to question. To ensure that the truth we shared was based on facts and not personal opinion. This reality has been badly shaken and altered in the past twenty years.

Journalist Clare Malone recently wrote a compelling New Yorker article about the seismic shift that mass media is, has and likely will continue to go through in the foreseeable future.

Malone reports on the high number of recent layoffs in the journalism game, how many publications and websites have folded in spite of storied and accomplished histories, (Buzzfeed News online and Sports Illustrated in print as examples) and speculates about the way forward in the mass media industry.

“Last April (2023), Jonah Peretti, one of BuzzFeed’s co-founders, shuttered BuzzFeed News, and published a memo about the way forward for his company and others like it. “The vast majority of people will increasingly want social media platforms to provide an escape where they can find entertainment, joy, and fun,” Peretti wrote. “This will drive a return to the editorially curated news homepage like HuffPost, Drudge, and CNN.com.” Direct traffic to sites with strong audiences and reputations would be the future.

As a former journalist, this is a cautiously optimistic possibility. I well remember the gold rush like fever that accompanied the dot.com economic boom.

That was based – as far as I could tell – on an elaborate game of smoke and mirrors played by tech savvy entrepreneurs with the able assistance of financially supportive businessmen fueled by FOMO (fear of missing out).

The dot.com boom was inevitable as far as I was concerned. The tsunami of websites and “online portals” being created were so much space litter as far as I was concerned.

Who was going to manage their content? Who was going to pay people to manage their content? What is the business model that was going to generate the income that would be needed to pay the content managers and run the site’s operations?

There was a whole lot of “Well, ya. I hadn’t fully thought that through,” coming back from the tech-savvy visionaries who weren’t grounded in the basics of business economics.

Maybe in journalism we might see the same thing. After a decade or two or more of histrionic, puerile, hair pulling and hate mongering on the internet, consumers will get thoroughly fed up with the negativity and “fake news.” I, for one, already am.

We should hope for a great culling of the vast weak and insubstantial players on the internet that disguise themselves as “authorities.” (Truth Social come to mind, anyone?)

It is high time to get rid of the self-interested who have used the internet as a playing field to pursue their own personal agendas and bend the facts to strictly suit their own narrative and bottom line.

What the guys trying to throw everyone into the boiling water don’t seem to realize is two things: a lot of people aren’t going to put themselves in a position to be boiled alive and 2) these visionaries with the lofty schemes actually NEED others to buy into and ultimately execute those lofty visions.

As aging actress Margo Channing announces in the face of a sea change she intends to create in the movie All About Eve: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

And as a bit of gratuitous advice in the coming era of mass media upheaval, avoid sitting in any cold water filled pots – no matter how cool and inviting they might seem at first.