The Doe’s Latest Stories

I was trained by an old-school journalist. He drilled into us the importance of the inverted pyramid, and we’d wake up quoting the “five Ws and one H.”We were trained to think outside the box and ask open-ended questions that would get a subject talking. I earned accolades in competitions and had a regular following amongst my peers. I even put together a teen spread for our local newspaper.The summer before my senior year in high school, I earned a scholarship to a journalism workshop at Stanford University where I learned that reporters didn’t just need to organize facts; they had to entertain readers in order to stay competitive.How did I learn this, you may ask? By telling the story of my first kiddie kiss.Red-headed Richie in my first grade class invited me over to his house to play after school. His mom talked to my mom, and the playdate was arranged.I remember being fascinated by his Spirograph toy and asked to play with it. He agreed on one condition: I had to kiss him.I thought about it for a minute. I really wanted to play with that toy. OK. What could one kiss hurt? We both puckered up and kissed on the lips.I almost wiped my lips off my face scrubbing them into my sweater sleeve. Then, he held out for another! This made me mad, but alright, just one more kiss, on the cheek, not the lips this time. When he wouldn’t let me play with the Spirograph after the second kiss, demanding a third, I slugged him in the arm and asked his mom to take me home.While blushing crimson, the workshop organizer used my story to communicate the value of entertainment.After four years of high school journalism, a week at a Stanford University journalism workshop and two years in college, I was ready for my TV news internship.

I sat stunned. I was speechless.

My Journalism Experience Didn't Prepare Me for TV News

Decked out in my pinstripe skirt and jacket with my red satin blouse, I was champing at the bit for the chance to cover a live event. If only the news correspondent who I was shadowing would twist her ankle or get hit by a car in traffic. I say this in jest, but I was ready.Until I listened to her story.She spoke for almost three minutes in that newscaster tone and answered only two of the five Ws and one H. She answered “who” and “where.” Yet she obfuscated the interviewee’s attempt to explain “what” and “why,” and she cut him off before he could share “when” and “how” to be a part of the experience.After the cameras were off and we were heading to the van to our second assignment, I asked her about dropping the ball on her report. Her response shocked me, rattled me to the core.“I thought you went to college. How’d you get this internship anyway? You NEVER give them any more than three.” (She was referring to the five Ws and one H.)I sat stunned. I was speechless.As time progressed in that internship, I came to learn that this was, in fact, industry-standard practice.Take a minute to think of something that happened recently and scribble down the answers to these questions:What happened?Why did it happen?When did it happen?Where did it happen?Who did it happen to?How did it end?Now try to tell a friend about what you just filled in the blanks using only two or three of the details you listed above.You can’t communicate even close to the truth if you’re limited to only three of the six foundational facts needed to tell a story.

TV news was an entirely different beast altogether. It was the practice of spinning stories to meet the station’s agenda and story criteria.

TV Journalism Compromised My Morals

Old-school journalists were trained to write in the inverted pyramid so that a news article was top-heavy with facts and information and ended with details that could be cut from the bottom in a pinch, without compromising the story, if the newspaper needed the column inches for another story.TV news was an entirely different beast altogether. It was the practice of spinning stories to meet the station’s agenda and story criteria.I learned this bitter truth in the 1990s, when it was still taboo for reporters to proclaim their overt opinions in their reporting.So it never surprised me when the media spun a lie and proclaimed the boilerplate judgments on political opponents of the media elite.Suffice it to say that I never became a TV journalist because this practice went against my grain.But it does my heart extreme glee to see the exposure of the propaganda regimes seated at the most prominent and influential mics and anchor seats across the land fall into the pits they dug for so many others.I will always be grateful for the opportunity I had to learn in my TV news internship. The peek into the inner workings of media, press releases and learning how to pique their interest for community service projects will always be a treasure I carried away from the experience. It was also the bitter realization that I could not, in good conscience, become the next Jane Pauley without compromising my personal integrity.

As I sit down to write this mythology of the media, I’m reminded by a book that lies open on my coffee table about the inherent necessity of good journalism and brilliant thinkers. As I lift my gaze, there sits the TV in the corner of my perfectly charmless place. The TV all too often exemplifies everything that has gone wrong with journalism. The Fourth Estate, for so long a vital pivot point of democracies, now seems bereft of balance and measure—often, it seems, bereft also of truth. It is a breath of fresh air when an editor or publication, such as The Doe, provides a space in which to continue asking difficult questions, to explore alternative narratives and burst the bubble of the echo chamber.I’ve drifted in and out of the media as a musician, a subject of reporting and a researcher for most of my life. For a decade in academia as a student and tutor, the gold standard for acceptable references was the BBC. Journalists, or at least the best of them, asked tough questions, exposed injustice and, in my experience, remained politically neutral for the most part. Even if feigned, integrity is infectious. At least that’s what I believed until one day in 1997.

I believed, perhaps naively, in the possibility of the media.

I Believed in the Power of Big News

I’d recently finished working on an investigation into the death of a friend of mine, a man called Dennis Stevens. The tragic and needless death of another Black man in custody was explored in detail, experts were interviewed and resources to carry out all these tasks were granted courtesy of the BBC, specifically what was then known as the Community Programme Unit. The CPU, as we called it, was a team within the then BBC news HQ in Shepherd’s Bush, London. Its focus was matters of social justice, equality and public interest. It was a team dedicated to providing voices and research resources and support to Joe and Jane Public. I was involved in two series, Prison Weekly and Private Investigations. It was very much about stimulating discussion and promoting awareness of people and places that often attract little empathy. Private Investigations was exclusively about giving voice to folks like the residents scammed by a local authority. We looked for stories by advertising in magazines of the day, asking people to contact us if they had an issue that warranted an investigation. It was a great idea, a great use of public resources (the BBC being publicly funded) and to this day, I can only see it as a tragedy that it was wound down. In many ways, we were doing at the CPU what contemporary independent and citizen journalists are doing on social media platforms today.Working with the CPU, I had been deeply impressed by the producers and journalistic staff and had been given free rein to ask questions about deaths in custody, the coronial court system, prison officers, control and restraint techniques and institutional racism. I believed, perhaps naively, in the possibility of the media, TV specifically, to realize the promise of the Fourth Estate.In a documentary I was working on after the Dennis Stevens case, we were looking at a case of property fraud. A local authority in London had been selling off social housing apartments while providing the buyers with falsified surveys. Basically, the council had sold off council properties that they knew were structurally unsound and would require more than the purchase price in repairs to be made safe. It was a great example of the BBC identifying a local story of national consequence and public interest. I felt angry for the elderly couples who had fulfilled the dream of homeownership, only to be ripped off and left facing bankruptcy and homelessness. It was a powerful and necessary inquiry into criminal behavior by local politicians and their civil servants. I don’t believe a documentary could be made in the same way today, 20-odd years later. And I believe I know why. As we worked day to day on the content of this particular documentary, the national conversation was coming to a head. A febrile, bitter political campaign had seen the birth of a new political superstar. A new kind of left emerged for what Francis Fukuyama famously described as “the end of history.” Neoliberalism was the new orthodoxy accepted by the leadership of both main political parties. Tony Blair and the rebranded New Labour Party appeared to offer us in the U.K. an Obama-like shot of blind hope. I was a believer, blinded by my personal hatred of Margaret Thatcher and the Tories—I would’ve voted for Screaming Lord Sutch just to give the Tories a bloody nose. Politics don’t seem to have changed much, but I have, and so it seems has the BBC.

I Got My Hopes Up—Then Had Them Crushed

During the many hustings and events in the run-up to the 1997 general election, we had sourced interview material with the then-Shadow Minister for Housing, a likable chap called Nick Raynsford. Probably high on his own supply of political stimulation, he made a firm commitment to look into the council housing fraud scam should Labour (called New Labour at the time) be elected to office. Perhaps he didn’t believe they would topple an incumbent Tory government.At the BBC water coolers and coffee machines, where the real shit gets done, it was obvious that the Community Programme Unit was staffed by Labour Party supporters. Some of the senior production staff had even been in uni with “Tony” or “Peter” or “Alistair.” OK, that’s cool, no problems there then. Surely professionals would be just that: professionals.The morning after Tony Blair’s lap of honor around Downing Street, my girlfriend, a Luxembourger, found me watching the BBC news in tears. The sheer unexpurgated joy of that election victory still rings in my heart and ears. She smiled but didn’t quite get it. It felt magnificent and, I’m guessing for my American counterparts, something like it felt stateside when Obama was elected—a feeling that things could and would be done differently.I got to the BBC around 11 a.m. and somehow ended up in a brief meeting with one of the department heads. She had in her hand a handwritten fax from Westminster. We’d put in a message the day before reminding Nick Raynsford of his commitment to sorting out the council housing fraud uncovered in a London borough.“Nick’s being moved to a different portfolio, and please can you give us a break on this one?”Call me naive or stupid, but I thought that Blair’s government were going to be different, more transparent, more responsive to localized issues. How wrong was I? Within a year, the Community Programme Unit was closed down.

I kick myself these days for believing that we actually lived in a socially just and inclusive society with the BBC acting as some kind of apolitical ethics committee.

We Need Truly Independent Journalists

My god, I kick myself these days for believing that we actually lived in a socially just and inclusive society with the BBC acting as some kind of apolitical ethics committee. As Johnny Rotten sneered as he walked away from the Sex Pistols in 1978, “Ever get the feelin’ you’ve been cheated?” I know I did.The moment it went down, I knew the compromises I’d made to curb my excessive behaviors, to be a participating, activated citizen. Christ, I’d even started being pleasant to people I didn’t even like! If I could change, then surely politics could?The BBC did air the documentary as a two-part, 10-minute package, but there was no follow-up or promotion, and Nick Raynsford wasn’t ever asked a question about the promise he had made to Labour voters to look specifically at dodgy local authority property deals and scams.It may seem to some like a seemingly insignificant decision, but a BBC producer burying a story of public interest at the request of a political operative is something that should bother us all. It is the alternative media outlets that have emerged in recent years that seem now to offer a selection of flavors no longer palatable to the controllers of TV channels or the broadsheets. There’s always hope.When it works well with honesty, integrity and professionalism, the Fourth Estate is a jewel in the crown of democracy. The Founding Fathers understood this and constructed a Constitution around which freedom of speech and the press were fundamental to the machinations of a healthy democracy.I am truly heartened by newer outlets and the advent of the citizen journalist. Armed with a trusty mobile phone and a desire to understand events, Jane Public is now the creator of the most interesting and well-researched narratives. So rifle your drawers and dig out your own memories—everyone has stories of interest, and wrapped up in those stories of human experience are always kernels of truth and love and justice. If, like me, you’ve felt cheated, act on it. Write about it. Get involved. As the saying goes, all it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.

On my first week of work, someone called into the office and demanded to know if I was a communist.This didn’t happen during the Cold War; this was four months ago.I had just started work at a local, small-town newspaper, and we had run a story in my first issue. It introduced me, gave a short bio and mentioned my master’s degree and that I had lived in New York.In fairness to the man who called, my politics are pretty far left (I wasn’t the one who picked up the phone, so I got out of telling him that). I knew that I’d be out of place in the libertarian Mountain West, but I wanted to give it a try because I wanted to listen better to people I disagreed with, especially in a culture far different from my own. This is where the writing job was, and I took it.Here’s what I’ve found: No matter what other perspectives journalists and news outlets hold, the press is still biased in favor of the press. I don’t think the industry deserves the credit it gives itself.

I don’t think the industry deserves the credit it gives itself.

I Joined the School Newspaper and Learned About Its Ideals

I started paying attention to the media world in college, around late 2015. I enjoyed learning what good writing could teach me, whether that was a perspective from an essay or a person’s story from a profile. I had been majoring in humanities but narrowed my focus to journalism specifically. I soon joined the student newspaper.Most of my classmates at the paper enjoyed the harder edge of journalism, investigating and breaking news wherever they could. They cornered the board of regents after their meetings and dug up legal documents about the university’s finances. At its best, that type of journalism is valuable as a public service, uncovering the world’s secrets and keeping its leaders honest.This formative time coincided with a world-changing presidential election, and the press, even at its most neutral, became politicized. Facing criticism from the grassroots right below and the president above, the media rallied behind accountability, its ostensible reason for existing. The Washington Post, for example, ran a new slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” and promoted it with a Super Bowl commercial. Many on the left rallied behind the media as a way to express their frustration with the new administration—“Democracy Dies in Darkness” is available as a T-shirt. The news media and its creators were seen as heroes, a view that trickled down from the White House press room until it covered the entire industry.The most vulnerable news outlets, however, are the local ones, and as small-town papers have been forced to close over the past several years, national media have told their stories. Coming from well-funded and well-known platforms, these stories—like the last reporter in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, as seen in The New York Times, or The Hawk Eye in Burlington, Iowa, depicted in The Atlantic—are a way to show how the other half lives, but they also emphasize how important it is to report the news and how it matters to readers and their communities. Local journalism, these pieces are quick to point out, decreases political polarization because it encourages people to listen to one another more.

My Editors Are Culpable of Slanting Stories and Headlines

I came to this little town to listen better. I had been looking for other writing jobs, but when I saw this one, the opportunity to participate in something important appealed to me. The local newspaper matters to its community—I knew that from the stories I’d read. I knew my neighbors wouldn’t share my political beliefs, but why should I let that stop me? If I backed away from this job because it was in a conservative part of the country, then I would be no better than the latte-sipping coastal elites who people here expect to look down on them. So I accepted the paper’s offer and moved 1,400 miles away from home to be a reporter.My job isn’t heroic. I can’t even say I’m proud of it.In many ways, I work at a great paper. It’s strictly local, with no filler from The Associated Press or other newswires. You can find standings from the high school basketball league, but not NBA scores. Whenever the county commissioners have their meetings, I’m there, ready to write up what they discuss. I also cover retirements and charity auctions, small events that are barely news but give people a way to be proud of their community.It often isn’t that simple, especially in the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic. Cases were so high this fall that the schools shut their doors. I think that was a wise choice, but at the next two school board meetings, parents and others in the community packed the high school gym to express their disapproval. I thought, and still think, that the closure and the mask requirement that followed were the right decision. I tried to cover those meetings neutrally, but when I wasn’t enthusiastic about the parents’ disapproval, the paper got angry calls and letters to the editor.In editorial meetings and in my story assignments, my editors have pushed for stories about flaws and hypocrisy with regard to state and federal health requirements, especially about vaccines. Those flaws exist, to be sure, but slanting the coverage in a way that emphasizes the mess and not the health risk caters to our readers’ preconceived ideas of how society works.That doesn’t reduce polarization; it makes it worse.Even on local issues, where our paper is the only way for people to learn what happens in the city planning and zoning meetings, I still have an editorial mandate to make it interesting. That means emphasizing the conflict: If a homeowner is denied a permit to renovate her property, she’s the victim, and the committee members are being ignorant and arrogant for maintaining the status quo. Our paper’s publisher is also the head of a group in town that promotes development, which slants the coverage even further.

My job isn’t heroic. I can’t even say I’m proud of it.

Newspapers Are Still a Business Trying to Sell Ad Space

Newspapers are a product to be sold. They are made to sell copies and advertising space. To make that happen, we, as journalists, write stories that people want to read, and if that means exaggerating drama or leaning on one political viewpoint to make it happen, that’s what we do.I doubt most journalists feel this way about the field they work in; otherwise, we would get better-paying jobs somewhere else. But even this sense of self-sacrifice is part of the problem: If half the country is calling you a hero, it’s hard not to listen, especially if the other half is dismissing you out of hand with ignorant fury. The conditions are perfect for developing a martyr complex.The popular idea of a small-town paper, with its aw-shucks editor and salt-of-the-earth reporters pounding the pavement, is a nice one. It’s easy to digest. The highest achievements of the industry, like the investigations into Watergate at The Washington Post or the Catholic sex abuse scandal in The Boston Globe, also paint newspapers in a flattering light.Those stories matter, but at their core, newspapers are in the same kind of business as cable news and talking-head pundits. And I’m part of it.

As a teenager, first fashioning my journalistic fantasies, I envisioned working in pale-toned newsrooms, loud with the jazz of slamming keyboards from writers working on deadline and a Jimmy Breslin-like editor yelling “get the story” in the back. I imagined myself a career in criticism, writing exposées on the Hollywood elite and reporting on the cultural goings-on within New York City. I imagined I’d be an essayist whose words on society were gospel for the average adult American. An aspiring Joan Didion or Nora Ephron, you could say. Now, one decade and a journalism degree later, instead of the “critic on the streets of New York” persona I had in mind, I’m a reporter at a children’s magazine, working in my sweatpants out of a dual office-bedroom. The ping of a Slack notification from my boss doesn’t have the same gravitas as a backroom Breslin bellow. I would call my career trajectory an upward fall. My internship with a politics and pop culture publication was ending and a position at an affiliated children’s magazine was opening. It was an entry-level role at a print news magazine for kids beginning at age seven or eight and up to the early double digits, but I didn’t have any other suitors hitting up my LinkedIn chatline. I did, however, have rent and student loan debt to pay on a monthly basis. And at such an early time in one’s career, you’ll say yes to anything so long as you feel like you’re still playing the game. And there I was, still in the media game. I was writing and reporting the news. I was a journalist.

It wasn’t reporting fluff as much as it was wrapping the news in fluffier packaging.

I Learned the Importance of Helping Children Understand the News

Like any job, I did what was required of me. I was tasked with mostly back-end work. I helped with the research for other writers and with the administrative side of things, filing invoices and building pitch memos. But this audience, this readership, required more of me than I thought. It required a reversal in the way I saw the world. I was sitting in pitch meetings where reporting on anything too negative or violent was lobbied against. We couldn’t talk about the separation of families at the border between the U.S. and Mexico, the looming threat of a Russian global takeover or the realities of police brutality against Black Americans in this country. A pandemic was raging and we were told to look for stories of kindness. Doubts on our democracy were being cast and we couldn't stop reporting on NASA. I was biting my tongue through it all. Why are we sheltering these children? I thought.I was wrong, though. I didn’t need to bite my tongue as much as I had to look for what was going right instead of what was going wrong. If there was a natural disaster, what relief effort was underway? If there was a protest, who was trying to help? Or rather, what story can we run to help readers digest it all? There was a nuance in the delivery that I didn’t understand at first. They were interested in reporting the big news to the little ones, but just in a way they could engage with it and understand. It wasn’t reporting fluff as much as it was wrapping the news in fluffier packaging.

The Capitol Insurrection Brought Out the Best in Our Kid Subscribers

It was especially drilled into us that our reporting must remain unbiased, even though it was clear that nearly the whole team were democratic liberals and no one supported Donald Trump. There was an active effort to maintain balanced political coverage, otherwise parents would write in claiming we were indoctrinating their children, which did and does happen. So, when thousands of people attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, I had no idea what we were going to do. This was an America I didn’t want kids to experience. This did not have two sides; this had one very ugly one. But, we—or rather, my editors and the writers above me in rank—stepped up. This came at a time when I was still just working with half my heart, relishing in the joy of collecting a steady paycheck. A steady salary is oh, so seductive. But, as I said, my heart wasn’t fully in it. Then, I was a part of a magazine that helped explain January 6 to kids, a magazine that prompted kids to write in and explain what democracy means to them. I looked at their letters with visions for America. Ones advocating for diverse leadership and universal health care. Ones that called for voting rights legislation and more funding in renewable energy. Ones that protected natural lands and animals. They were engaged with the current events and had opinions. And almost unanimously, all of their visions were for a brighter, more inclusive country.

Working at a children’s print magazine, I feel like I’m both frozen in time and accelerating through it.

I’ve Found Joy in Informing and Engaging with Generation Alpha

Our readers often tell us what they like in the magazine and what they want to see more of. They correct us when the caption of an animal photo lists the wrong species. They raise money for cancer research by selling handmade tie-dye T-shirts, and they collect soccer equipment for schools in rural Africa. I thought my career was about pointing out what’s wrong in society, but instead, I’m emboldening Generation Alpha, as they’ve been officially delineated, to build a better future. Working at a children’s print magazine, I feel like I’m both frozen in time and accelerating through it. With this position also comes the rare opportunity to work for a print magazine. In a way, I have my toes dipped in the old media world for a new media generation. The physicality of my work—getting to hold the magazine in my hand—is also so fulfilling. In many ways, I’m living out the Jimmy Breslin fantasy. I’m writing on tight printing deadlines and working with the “department of factual verification” as described in Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights Big City. I have to write a lot in a few words and I don’t get the luxury of going back in to edit.You can spend your whole life building your dreams, designing the details of your future life, but it will never look like that. And even if you get everything you ever wanted, it’s not going to be in the way you thought it would happen. I wanted to be a writer who reported on the complexities of adult life; instead, I’m a writer breaking down the complexities for children. It’s not what I envisioned, but it turns out I like providing the fluffy packaging.

I wasn’t exactly a diligent student at school. I had the ability, but I liked partying a little too much, which wasn’t a great asset when it came to studying or exams. Despite these shortcomings, I harbored an ambition to become a journalist or a writer, and I greatly admired the journalists who appeared regularly in local and international newspapers. As time went on and maturity entered the fray, I began to realize that not all newspapers or journalists were created equally; some were even referred to as “the gutter press.” Cheap journalism, like so many things, existed on the periphery of our world but rarely affected those we knew and loved.Until one day, it did. I had known my best friend since preschool; we had our first argument over who could use the finger paints. She was the only girl among three boys in a political family that was both wealthy and revered in our town—at least they were when I first knew her. Her father was a bear of a man who had played sports professionally in his younger years and now commanded the same presence in government that he once had on the field. Her mother was an imposing woman who was hard on her daughter “for her own good” and excelled at playing the politician's wife. It was easy to see that she adored her husband. Despite his many flaws, she was always by his side to weather any political storm that brewed.

The vultures from the press were ready and waiting to pick at the remains of his life and legacy.

After His Fatal Accident, the Press Began Fabricating Stories

As we grew older, rumors about the family—more precisely, her father’s corrupt dealings—began to swirl. Even as a teenager, she took it on the chin, considering the scrutiny part and parcel of life in the limelight. Dealing with the press was something she had learned from a young age. Gradually, her father’s status began to diminish, and as more and more front-page stories about him appeared, his fall from grace seemed inevitable. The headlines eventually inspired government investigations, followed by legal inquiry after inquiry, culminating in a short stay in jail for his refusal to comply with a court order. Through it all, the family held their heads high, united in the sincere belief that he was a wronged man who would soon prove his innocence. Sadly, time was not on their side to reach that objective. Two years after his descent had begun, when the “disgraced” politician died tragically in a horrific car crash while traveling abroad on business, the vultures from the press were ready and waiting to pick at the remains of his life and legacy. The journalists who had once celebrated and then vilified him rubbed their hands in glee at the prospect of such a newsworthy story; they took it upon themselves to embellish the circumstances in a bid for higher readership. When it was revealed that another passenger in the car, a young woman, was the sole survivor of the accident that claimed two lives, she was labeled a prostitute by the press. She was, in fact, a legal assistant, translator and interpreter who was traveling in a business capacity when the tragedy occurred. The entire debacle added unnecessary pain and suffering to an already traumatized family that was doing its best to come to terms with the loss of a husband and father under the scrutiny of the public eye. Headlines screamed about prostitutes, hookers and sleazy hotels with a “report first, ask questions later” attitude that, although not new, was certainly my first experience with it on a personal level. Despite the previous accusations of corruption, I had liked the man immensely, and my heart was broken for my friend, who had idolized him to saintly proportions.

The damage had been done.

My Friend’s Family Will Never Forget the Damage the Media Created

The revolt was immediate.Public opinion, which had (for the most part) shown little goodwill towards the man over the recent years, launched an emphatic defense against the slanderous allegations and the shoddy journalism that devastated a grieving family. One publication, in particular, was besieged with complaints from longtime readers who vowed to take their patronage elsewhere in protest at their lazy reporting and heartless storytelling. And that’s what the reports were: works of fiction that set out to destroy a dead man’s already much-maligned reputation. A flurry of retractions and public apologies did little to quell the storm—the damage had been done. The editors responsible made TV appearances where they bowed their heads in shame and promised it would never happen again and, eventually, time moved on and wounds healed. But the family has never forgotten. To this day, my friend will no longer buy the particular rag that printed the most obscene headlines on the day her father died. Even today, seeing it on the newsstands is a constant reminder of how the worst day of her life was somehow made worse by strangers tapping away on their keyboards in a bid to break a story. As for me, a young novice contributor to newspapers at the time, I was ashamed of the profession that I had previously strived to join. I decided then and there that I could never forge a career in an industry that could show such callous disregard for a family’s grief. Of course, that was naive and it didn’t last.To some extent, standards have improved within the industry, but the lack of trust remains. I moved on and eventually, I found my way back to writing for a living. But despite my newfound maturity and acceptance, the entire affair has left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. To this day, I often think about the families and the people behind the headlines. We all should.

I can’t believe I accepted the hug. But there I was, a political reporter hugging a city council member in the middle of the city hall rotunda, congratulating her new leadership post in full view of other council members and their staffers. And even, god forbid, a couple of fellow journalists. I’m a political reporter. I was supposed to cover her, not cover her. A dozen thoughts ran through my head in the one-second embrace with the councilwoman. As a political reporter, I’m constantly managing relationships with some of the most difficult people in the world: small-time politicians. My entire job rotates around what politicians are doing and saying. But if I want to do my job better, I’ve also got to find out what they’re not doing and not saying. And, of course, what they’re thinking. So you can’t just show up at press conferences. You’ve got to call them, text them, tweet at them, get coffee with them. You want them to trust you but not become their friend. Because at the end of the day, it’s business, not personal. And you’re both using each other.

The power of the pen is real.

A Relationship Ruined by a Tweet

One day at city hall, journalists were sitting around and riffing at the end of a workday. One got a text from an elected official, lamenting that he didn’t get enough credit for the role he played in recent negotiations. The reporter read it aloud to the five of us. Jeez, she said, doesn’t he have some friends to talk to? Or a therapist? I laughed, but I was secretly jealous.Why didn’t I get that text too?Some politicians have a little bit of Bill Clinton in them. They make you feel like you’re the only reporter in the world. There was one councilwoman who I talked to all the time. She would share inside information and gossip about other members. Sometimes when she couldn’t get a question answered by the mayor, she’d see if I could ask it at the next press conference. When we saw each other in person, we’d greet each other warmly. She was my mom’s age, but my girlfriend joked that this politician was my real girlfriend.Only later did I find out that she does this with a lot of young men. Nothing creepy. But she has her favorites, and it wasn’t just me. That relationship with the councilwoman got ruined by a tweet. One night, I idly speculated that she would be endorsing a certain mayoral candidate. I got a phone call. “Delete that. It’s wrong and it will get me in trouble.” “I’m sorry,” I explained. “I’ll tweet again that I guessed wrong. But I’m not going to delete it.”“We’ve had a good relationship,” she said. “I wouldn’t want this to end it.” I stuck to my guns. I was not deleting a totally fair tweet under pressure. But it ruined the relationship. She didn’t respond to my calls for months after that, and we avoided each other’s eyes at city hall. Then, one day, it was all forgotten. I was writing a couple stories that she wanted to be quoted in. We talked on a cold night in a small city park, but the conversation was warm as ever.

Reporters Are Responsible to Readers but Must Be Fair to Their Subjects

Twitter is a huge help. Sometimes, it’s the best way to get to a politician directly, instead of going through a spokesperson who may or may not get your question to their boss. And sometimes, electeds will reach out to you directly to follow up on a tweet. But it gets you in trouble too.Call out an elected official’s hypocrisy on Twitter and you might get upbraided face to face at a county Democratic Party dinner that night. What he’ll say is that Maggie Haberman would never do that. She is a god and you kids just don’t get it. What he’ll mean is that you let snark get in the way of nuance. (And by the way, Maggie Haberman would totally do that.)It’s a difficult balance. A reporter is responsible, first, to the readers. I owe it to them to get as close to the whole truth as I can. And if I can entertain them while I’m at it? That just means more people will want to read it. But you hold some responsibility to the elected officials too. The power of the pen is real. Politicians signed up for scrutiny and higher standards, but you’ve got to be fair and accurate and give them a chance to explain themselves.

The state senator was furious.

I’ve Stuck to My Guns and Learned That Time Mends Relationships

Of course, just as I need them to talk to me, they need me to write about them. I once reported that a state senator had contributed to his chamber’s reputation for dysfunction. After all, he’d been arrested for assault and had a reputation for screaming at his colleagues. I was in an Uber ride home with my co-worker when I got a phone call. The state senator was furious. “That was an unfair shot,” he said. “I give you a quote for the story, and this is how you repay me? I’m never talking to you again. Lose this number.”I was shook, but I knew I was right. Three years later, he was running for higher office and reached out to me, asking for an interview. It felt better than getting a hug.

In the Philippines, two things get you places: money and connections.Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines, once relayed a damning quote: “Perception is reality, and the truth is not.”The Philippines has always been nationalistic in that regard: The country feeds the international press what they want them to see.

There Is No Freedom of the Press in the Philippines

As a journalist in the Philippines, let me tell you the truth about what matters here: First, there is no such thing as the freedom of the press. Why do I say this? Because it’s glaringly obvious. Propaganda has always been the name of the game here, and the local media nowadays has played an integral role in that. Just listen to the old AM radio shows; they have it down to a T by appealing to the masses. Yet no one here does anything about it. Sound journalism during the heyday of the People Power Revolution has evaporated into thin air and become a memory of a time gone by. Everything here comes with a price. One of the biggest media outlets here was forced to shut down, not for criticizing the government but because their legislative franchise had expired after 25 years due to a technicality. They just didn’t negotiate well enough. Of course, there was a lot of furor about this from the middle class and other activists, who all screamed that this was an attack on freedom of the press and democracy. The truth is, it was all just a PR game. Today, this media outlet is thriving online and still making bank. They certainly didn’t fade into obscurity.Enough media coverage can make anyone look bad. Where else can you see a health secretary, heading the country’s beleaguered public health department, blasted on social media for being corrupt just for wearing an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak wristwatch during a senate hearing about the slow response during the COVID-19 pandemic? This, of course, only happens in the Philippines. The president defended the secretary’s attire and integrity. “He wouldn’t do that because [he] is already rich,” he said. “He has a hospital, a school, everything including the most beautiful wives, he has them all. They are all beautiful—this is important.”

Sound journalism during the heyday of the People Power Revolution has evaporated into thin air.

News About Politicians Has Been Corrupted by the Media

For a concrete argument to be believed as the truth, it requires a serious amount of support, which the government gets from journalists and broadcasters who skillfully and semantically manipulate the masses daily. It is almost impossible to discern what the truth is because the people themselves can’t discern facts from statements, especially when morality and God-fearing attitudes are so important in the Philippines.Now that elections are happening, the Philippines is being put on the world stage as international journalists clamor to give their takes on the prospect of candidates without even recognizing that the elections for the locals are a massive debacle of personalities. Almost everyone here can see right through each contender.This is where media in the Philippines has stopped following the credence and principles of good journalism. There is no such thing as accuracy, transparency, impartiality, fairness or accountability, especially during elections. I’ve seen this happen many times over the years. The media coverage that each newspaper showers over a single candidate is starkly different, offering hardly believable stories.

There is no such thing as accuracy, transparency, impartiality, fairness or accountability.

Change Won’t Happen Unless the Country Sees Past the Lies

How can you stop it when it’s right there in your face? The answer is bleak. It has become evident that no one is doing anything but keeping calm and carrying on. It would require more than half of the population of this country to bring the realities of this forward to anyone. We need a strong media personality to raise the baton, but that seems like a pipe dream.While these questions are being raised, fearmongering permeates each article or news broadcast—if only people could see through the rose-colored glasses that are tinting their eyes. Then, there might be some hope for journalists to grow after all. Then, maybe things would finally change.

I doubt people in the media drink more than people in other fields but there is a very deep-rooted drinking-genius-writer myth that is very hard to dislodge. I mean, even if people slag off Ernest Hemingway, they still act like that’s the way to live. Everything seemed to revolve around drinking when I had a staff position. The good and the bad, both—these happened when we were full of booze. Obama elected? Drunk. Trump elected? Hammered. When something went right? Down to the bar. When someone was acting up? Let’s take them to lunch at the bar. The day after my sexual assault, I went through a whole list of reasons it might have happened, but it never occurred to me that alcohol might have played a role. Everyone was always drunk, so the condition was like a transparent film over everything.

Alcoholics, before they get sober, tend to think like cops.

Drinking Culture Permeates the Field of Journalism

When I think of my early days in writing, in the ’90s, it’s much more boozed up. There were nights during the week at the Magician or Brownies, when talking was woven into the spaces between pints. It was never a coffee date, always drinks. This will seem like an exaggeration, but it’s not, at least in my field. In the arts and in journalism, nobody ever went out for coffee—not in the ’90s. When the people I worked with and I were in London, it was, “See you down the pub.” AA is much less of a thing there.Here, in New York, there was sort of a ghost schedule for everything. Weeknights would just happen at a certain bar, and it never much mattered which one. If it was a weeknight, you could ask to meet someone, anyone, at a bar. The people you worked with were almost certainly going to be at a bar somewhere, and usually that became a sort of default. If there was no plan, you simply went to the Scratcher or Tile Bar. The kids I know now in the art world, they make it sound just as bad, if not worse. They seem to be doing K and coke all night long and meeting at some of the same bars. The idea is that you’d hit the bar and talk about whatever you were working on and argue needlessly. Maybe somebody was playing, and you’d go to their gig, but that was sort of ancillary. The gig was just a brief interruption in the drinking and the shit-talking. What happened is that these drinking sessions framed my life and made me think a certain way about the scope of experience. When I was assaulted, I didn’t even really think much of it beyond, “Ugh, that was a weird night.” That wasn’t even really the bad part. The fusion of friendship and work and drinking made everything that much harder to see, part for part. At one job, when I had a staff of about five, we were across the street from an Irish bar. Not a Blarney Stone, but something like it. Because the parent company of the paper I was working for had a really hard-drinking, right-wing tilt, almost everyone in the building was doing booze lunches at this place. I started doing this kind of thing maybe once a month and then, all of a sudden, it was twice a week. And then there would be a meeting that night at Milady's or Milano’s or Tom and Jerry’s and the buzz from lunch would not have worn off. The shots and beer backs would start colliding with the rosé, and I’d be blind by 10 p.m.There was no real impulse to change my behavior because the number of writers and editors who didn’t drink was so small as to seem like not worth considering. Of course, an alcoholic never realizes that they’re not drinking with alcoholics until it's too late. And this is how an alcoholic embarrasses themself, night by night. You see someone you work with, and you go over and drink with them. They nurse a drink all night; you have five. Whatever dumb shit you say goes into a folder whose contents are always being weighed against a folder of Other People’s Dumb Shit. This is how you would like to believe how the general social measure of behavior works. You are, by your own private math, in the middle of the pack. Your drinking and dumb behavior are normative, so it will have no impact. But the person you're talking to doesn't think that way nor should she. She just knows she’s having a bad time with you, the grabby motormouth, and this opinion is agnostic as to the behavior of others. This social aspect is important. Alcoholics, before they get sober, tend to think like cops. We assume that the other alcoholic writers and editors we work with will cover for us. And this is probably true, up to a point. And the culture, many years ago, was generally more alcoholic and things were forgiven, often when they shouldn’t have been. But the transparency of digital culture has changed all of that forever. Now people are getting sober because somebody they work with has taken a selfie with them. They thought it was all in good fun. And then the next day, they see the caption is, “LEAVING LAS VEGAS lol,” or, “COME GET YR GIRL TENNESSEE WHISKEY,” or some such. The things I kept hidden through social networks and complicit cohorts are being revealed by people who are not, in fact, alcoholics. Or maybe they are, and they’re just petty. There is also a range of delusions that the alcoholic engages with. Going to lunch with an important person and having wine seems like some kind of flex, like you’re really out here on some William Shawn bullshit, above it all. And whoever you imagined being your drinking idol may not have drunk like that. Think of how often you’ve seen Hunter S. Thompson’s breakfast routine reprinted. Did he ever do that, even once? We see our heroes and elders and colleagues as part of some vastly inspired cohort beyond the whims and restraints of the normies. We see footage of Thompson flipping a whiskey bottle at his desk and think, “Ah, that’s how it’s done.” Everyone else keeps watching and sees him drop it the next time, soaking himself in whiskey and being escorted out by the security guard. Nobody remembers the first five flips after the one that hits the floor. But the alcoholic, we trim and trim and trim the footage until the excerpt suits our needs. We are still the heroic last-minute filers. To the rest of the staff, we’re the alcoholic disasters who occasionally get it right.

But the alcoholic, we trim and trim and trim the footage until the excerpt suits our needs.

One of My Mentors Set the Gears of Sobriety in Motion

If you’re lucky, you’ll have a final lunch as I did. Jazzed about minor success, I took one of my mentors out to Cafe Un Deux Trois on 44th Street. She had the steak frites, and I had the French onion soup. She had seltzer, and I had white wine. We talked about everything, from the editors we hated to the ones we were worried about. The booze made me sentimental, which made her talk less. After two more glasses, I asked her to go to Jimmy’s Corner with me. After she paid the bill—why would an alcoholic ever put their card down first?—we went to the boxing bar. Jimmy was still there, at this time. We sat toward the front. I started with shots and beer backs, and my friend had a Coke. She looked unconcerned but also like she was sitting on something. I just rambled about TV, blogs, philosophers I barely understood, writers I had never met. I started claiming inspiration for my colleague’s pieces, talking about the more famous writers on staff without ever having met them. She was patient and occasionally corrected me on flaming, unbound errors. At 3 p.m., she said she had to go. And when she left me there, sideways and unable to remember my own schedule for the day, she said one thing. “You don’t have to do this anymore,” and that was the last time I saw her. I didn’t get sober for five more years, but almost every time I got home at 3 a.m. with a bad sandwich from the third-best bodega in my neighborhood (the only one open), I would think, “I don’t have to do this.” And then I’d watch documentaries about Eugene O’Neill on YouTube and think, “I’m not as bad as him.” I’d fall asleep on the couch, miss the 9 a.m. staff meeting and then rock up, cold brew in hand, excuses ready to go.

Studying journalism in college was the equivalent of watching a sausage being made. It forever changed my perception of the media industry, which I’ve come to see as a disinformation megaphone aimed at deceiving, misleading and fleecing, rather than informing consumers. Even while I was studying at one of the top journalism schools in the United States (and before I became a conservative Christian), it was obvious to me that the news media was a disgrace—a disgusting propaganda machine of “presstitutes,” as I called them, lying for their masters in exchange for crumbs.In fact, the more I learned about what passes for journalism, the more convinced I became that I would never be willing to work in the industry. They were corporate shills and Big Government bootlickers masquerading as objective outlets. I was way too good for that! And I would not be bought at any price.

The outrageousness of the media has gotten so extreme, the industry has become almost a parody of itself.

I Wanted to Be a Journalist to Fight Institutions, Not Support Them

When I was in my late teens, I realized that society was screwed up in a major way. Almost all young people have this sense somewhere deep inside them. But for me, it bubbled to the surface and became uncontainable long before I got to college. My suspicions about virtually all human institutions—jails, governments, churches, businesses and more—had been growing increasingly acute as a drug-addled, know-it-all teenager living in South Africa. It was clear that something was very wrong, even if I could not quite put my finger on what it was. The profit motive? Greed? Corruption? But lacking direction, and having run out of money and options, I decided to come back to America and enroll in college because that was supposed to be the thing to do for people my age—or at least that’s what I had been told by parents and counselors. Years prior, I had been expelled from high school for coming to school high every day (and sometimes tripping), cheating on tests, disrespecting teachers and other high crimes and misdemeanors. Apparently, I was a bad influence on the other kids, too. After testing out of most of my first two years at a community college and getting my associate degree, I enrolled in one of the top-ranked journalism colleges in America to pursue a bachelor’s in journalism. And almost right away, it became obvious that something was not right in the industry. The first lesson to hit me like a ton of bricks was on quoting government officials. We were taught that quoting government officials is virtually always appropriate and safe because even if they were wrong or not telling the truth, we could never get sued or get in trouble. Naturally, I raised my hand. “But don’t government officials lie all the time?” I asked. “And don’t we have a responsibility as journalists to expose their lies to the public?” The professor’s response was shocking: “Well, sort of. But you can never go wrong quoting a government official in your story.”This was essentially the message that was being drilled into the heads of the nation’s future journalistic elites. I could hardly believe it! And yet, it was constantly parroted from the lectern: Call the relevant government officials to get a quote, no matter the situation, every single time. Being something of a leftist at the time, I had a natural skepticism of corporations, too. The fact that America’s media landscape was almost entirely in the hands of a tiny group of evil, gigantic conglomerates was—and still is—deeply disturbing to me.

College Cured Me of My Idealism

Interestingly, the journalism school was combined with communications, which is where the university trains public relations hacks. These PR operatives are masters at manipulating the press on behalf of their paymasters, even though, in theory, PR and journalism should practically be seen as opposites. One of the most alarming experiences of my entire time as a journalism student was going to my mandated meeting with my appointed guidance counselor, who just so happened to have served as the executive editor of a leading newspaper in our state. His first question was why I wanted to be in journalism. “Well, I want to expose the secrets that the elites don’t want exposed,” I responded. If only I could have taken a picture of his contorted face. He looked as if I had just grown another head. Throughout all my years, I had always been led to believe that exposing the powerful was what the journalism industry was supposed to be about. Boy, was I wrong! And my experience at this university made that crystal clear. As an idealistic young journalism student, I felt incredibly conflicted. Would I sell my soul and work as a stenographer for the elites? Would I start my own publication to expose all these clowns? (And would there be a market for it?) Or would I simply go work in some other industry? First, I’d get my degree. Then I could think about it further. One of my key professors (the same one who was my counselor) told us we could get extra credit if our stories written for class got published in a real publication. I immediately approached both the newspapers in our community. (The university newspaper was such garbage, I would not have allowed my byline in there if you paid me.) My despair only grew more intense as I began writing for these two local papers. The first paper, a small, family-owned publication distributed throughout the county, was run by decent people and was hardly “liberal.” Unfortunately, though, they never had the slightest interest in publishing what I thought were important stories. The other paper, a major outfit owned by The New York Times, allowed me to write about important topics. But objective journalism sharing multiple perspectives was clearly off-limits. When I wrote an article about gun rights activists working to promote concealed carry on campus, for example, quotes from conservatives were cut, while quotes from anti-gun extremists were emphasized. So much for being fair and objective.In addition to the extra credit, both of those papers paid me a little bit for my stories. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like selling out for a grade and some cash. I knew this was not going to work long-term. I gradually came to terms with the idea that, despite being in a journalism school, I was never going to work in the industry.

It’s appropriately called a B.S. degree.

I Tried to Go My Own Way

As I went through this emotional conflict, some libertarian friends and I decided to start a free, student-run newspaper where we could tell the truth. Incredibly, it turned into a success pretty quickly. Advertisements poured in, local politicians were banging down our door to be interviewed and copies were flying off the shelves so quickly, we couldn’t keep local businesses and boxes stocked. I began to think that we might be able to turn the paper into a viable business. But unfortunately, disagreements with my two deputies over the direction of the paper—they were proud homosexuals, while I was becoming increasingly conservative as my beliefs lined up more and more with the Bible—eventually led to irreconcilable differences. We finally shut it down. Oh well, I thought to myself, I guess I’ll go study law or something. A few months before my graduation with a B.S. in journalism—and yes, it’s appropriately called a B.S. degree—I ended up discovering a national magazine that was not only willing to tell the truth but was interested in publishing my work. They paid better than any publication I had ever written for, and they had a national audience. Just in the nick of time.That was a decade ago. Since then, the outrageousness of the media has gotten so extreme, the industry has become almost a parody of itself. Today, I’m glad to be in journalism, but I never admit to anyone that I’m a journalist without clarifying that I’m not one of those dishonest liars peddling fake news for the elites like you see on CNN and Fox News. No, I’m interested in telling the truth, no matter what Big Government or Big Business thinks about it. If we ever want a legitimate journalism industry again—and having one is essential to a free society—the journalism schools are going to have to be radically reformed. Truth depends on it.

I’ve been a reporter, anchor, producer and writer at a New York City AM radio station for the past four years. One person having four jobs has become more of the norm in the broadcast media world over the last decade or so, and while the first two titles are the ones I perform the most, the last two have bolstered everything I do. In 2022, being a radio news broadcaster has shined a light on a lot of things for me. Storytelling and truth-telling and getting it right have always been part of the bedrock on which journalism was created—and they’re more important today than perhaps they’ve ever been. But in this industry, I’ve learned even more about adaptation. We have to adapt to a rapidly changing climate of media consumption that seems like it’s trying to leave us—especially my radio brethren—behind. Of course, the foundation is still there. It’s my job to tell people what’s happening.

My Pivot From Sports Broadcasting to News Radio

I’ve always had an affinity for radio. I grew up listening to WFAN, the first all-sports radio station in the country. There’s an intimacy to being in your car and having a loud, booming voice talking about how the Mets’ bullpen blew a game the night before. You feel like the hosts are talking to you and no one else—until someone calls in and you realize everyone else feels the exact same way. Some even want to talk back. My parents also listened to New York AM news radio, and, as a kid, I always wondered about the people talking to me. What do they look like? Where are they? What’s their story? For years, before the internet made these things available at the touch of a finger, I remained mystified by these voices. Then, I became one of them.In college, I had dreamed of being a sports broadcaster, and after four years of hosting and reporting and play-by-play experience, I always assumed that’s how my career would play out. In the months leading up to graduation in 2014, I planned to join a small-town station talking about local sports or do play-by-play for a small college. It was not to be. Instead, I found a job as a production assistant at a well-known New York sports television channel. The experience was bad—producers screamed in my ears nightly—and I eventually decided to pivot disciplines. I knew nothing about news, but I was soon offered a full-time job at a local TV news station. It led to fill-in opportunities (newscasts at my university’s NPR-affiliated station), which led to my first on-air gig: an overnight shift in Connecticut, six days a week and a two-hour commute from home.For most of the shift, I was by myself. I’d see off the afternoon drive anchor and prepare the next day’s news for the morning drive anchor, all while delivering two-minute newscasts at the top and bottom of every hour. I did that for 10 months, and while I’m certainly not the same broadcaster today, the experience laid the foundation for my current role.

Say what you want about the newspaper industry falling apart; despite shrinking in size and resources, it’s still our number one resource.

I Look for News Stories That Will Directly Inform and Help Our Community

How I got to New York is a classic story of networking. After working the overnight shift for about five months, I decided I wanted some feedback on my craft. I connected with an anchor reporter at my current employer; he ended up needing a freelance reporter. I kept in touch, offered to work in whatever capacity and eventually got hired. Four years into my job as a full-time news reporter, here’s a look into my day-to-day process. I typically start my job the night before. Our station has a behemoth email inbox where any and every politician and advocacy/community group sends us events that are happening. I check it to see what relevant things might be happening the next day. Then, in the morning, I scour the newspapers. They are the best source of what’s happening. Say what you want about the newspaper industry falling apart; despite shrinking in size and resources, it’s still our number one resource. Our station’s general news philosophy can be boiled down to this question: What is happening in communities across the tri-state area that impacts the most people? It’s also what I’m asking myself when I look for stories to report. Of course, there are more questions that I ask. And not every story we do impacts a lot of people. But listen to our newscasts enough and you will find that a majority of our stories do. The night before I report in the field, my mother will sometimes ask me where I’m going. I’ve never had an answer for her, and that’s part of the beauty of being a reporter. You truly have no idea what the day will bring. But the process is typically the same. I familiarize myself with the story, conduct interviews or cover press conferences and turn that sound into a piece of radio news. In radio lingo, we refer to these pieces as “wraps” because they include your voice wrapped around bits of sound from the sources in the story.

My Job Is All About Time Management

One of the reasons I appreciate being on radio as opposed to television is that I can record three different one-minute versions of the same story. If there’s a detail I didn’t have time to include in one wrap, I can add it to another. I also enjoy seeing the story from more than one angle. There’s always more than one important detail to every story, so I always like to switch up how I lead my wraps. Being in the anchor chair is also an absolute thrill, and it’s my favorite of the four jobs I have. Perhaps what I take the most pride in as a news broadcaster is being able to show the audience my level of credibility. I want to give them a feeling that the person delivering them the news can be trusted. The main anchor studio features two massive soundboards, each with more than a dozen different channels responsible for what goes over the air. You might think that it would be a producer’s job to handle the board. Not in radio news. The producer is on the other side of the glass in the newsroom, deciding what stories you’ll be talking about and what sound you’ll be playing. The anchor is tying it up in a bow for the audience to hear. As an anchor, I’m doing many different things over the course of my shift. I get to the station two hours before airtime. Then, I start writing. The producer has laid out the show rundown for me, which we refer to as “slotting,” aligning each segment with stories that, once I write them, should “time out,” meaning they should add up to how long the segment needs to be.This is crucial. Every all-news radio station in the country has a clock. It determines how long news segments run, when to throw to commercials, traffic, weather, sports, business and other segments. My top responsibility is to memorize their clock. Ultimately, everything I do as an anchor, both behind the scenes and behind the mic, is done with the goal of keeping the audience engaged and informed.

I wanted to do it the way the veterans did it.

I Have a Genuine Interest in Reporting News and Asking Questions

I don’t view myself any differently than veteran news broadcasters. I didn’t come into this business with a “millennial” point-of-view, determined to change the field for better or worse. I wanted to do it the way the veterans did it. All I had was a genuine interest in talking in front of a microphone. As much as they may say otherwise, you can’t deny that any broadcaster likes the sound of their own voice. The curiosity I had as a kid listening to the radio is what drives me as an anchor and a reporter to this day. If you don’t have questions about the world, it’s hard to be an effective news reporter. My job is to tell stories, a word I’m not sure I even like because it conjures fiction, the opposite of what I deliver behind the mic. The intimacy of broadcasting on the radio is even more intimate than being a listener. You sit alone in a soundproof studio talking to potentially millions of people on the other side. But I never think of it that way. Intimacy is the word I believe separates radio broadcasting from television. You can turn on a radio on any day, at any time, and find someone delivering content you’re looking for. Radio is simple. All the work is being done by a voice. You just have to listen.

The summer of 2020 has become couched in euphemism. While it was the first “COVID summer,” it was also the summer that catalyzed a wave of racial conversation after the murder of George Floyd. Soon, the news became saturated with reports of police violence and protest footage, and social media was flooded with pictures and promises to push for collective action and change. Though these images weren’t new, there was something different in the momentum garnered by this wave of protests. The conversations didn't stop after a week passed, and, for once, even mainstream rhetoric went past the usual platitudes. Instead of shallow takes on racism, the conversation pivoted into bigger topics like institutionalized racism, unconscious bias and the complicity of white Americans. Finally! This new energy was exciting, and it defined the summer. Everybody’s sentences began the same way: “With everything happening around George Floyd” or “The whole thing with Black Lives Matter,” but this time, the euphemisms signified bigger change. Even Angela Davis called it "a very exciting moment," saying, "I don't know if we have ever experienced this kind of global challenge to racism and to the consequences of slavery." For many Black people, these conversations were long overdue and the calls to center Black voices and “pass the mic” led to Black squares on Instagram pages and pledges for all corporations to do better in terms of diversity and inclusion.As a young professional trying to navigate the Covid-employment landscape, these conversations were encouraging. I’d gotten used to dealing with racial microaggressions before, with years of education in predominantly white institutions leaving me jaded, nihilistic and, at my worst, cripplingly depressed. But suddenly there was hope, and I could see it. Jobs I’d applied for months prior finally called me back—my ethnic name was no longer a detriment, but suddenly an asset—and opportunities to tell my story, and be heard, were almost too bountiful to be believed.So I jumped at them. In conversations I’ve had since, many of my Black friends and peers describe that time as a strange mix of validation and anxiety, at once feeling relief that we were finally being listened to, even as we looked over our shoulder, expecting the other shoe to drop. But while it was good, it was good—and I was going to grab the opportunities as they came.

I was going to grab the opportunities as they came.

The Company Went All-In on Anti-Racism Education

Soon, I accepted a job as a “BIPOC Staff Writer” at a digital media company. It seemed like the perfect role: I’d actually be encouraged to write about Blackness and Black representation in media and pop culture.The company expressed its commitment to “anti-racism,” because that was the buzzword at the time. It effusively promised me the freedom to express myself as a writer, and support to grow in my career. The organization shared a commitment to growth on their end, too. It implemented regular anti-racism meetings, a focus on diversifying sources, encouraging further anti-racism education for the staff, executive team training and more. And yes, it knew these were lofty goals, but it was committed to reaching them. As a media company, it said, it had even more responsibility than anyone to commit to intention and education. And it was determined to make that commitment.For a while, it was as good as it seemed. My team was full of other young, like-minded writers, all invigorated by the air of change—both in a wider societal context and within the company. People first, they said, not profit first. Though I was only one of two Black writers, I felt welcomed by the team and excited by the energy.As I got acclimated to the work environment, I learned more about the company itself. My side of the company was just a smaller part of a larger agency. We had relative freedom, sure, but there was the implicit understanding that we were there to direct traffic to the website. My coworkers and even my managers would unashamedly roll their eyes and say snide comments about our parent company.This clear divide was on display during our infrequent meetings with the other side of the team. While my managers did their best to emphasize the work we were doing and the direction we were moving, the other side just wanted numbers: more clicks, more money. Still, the surprising momentum for anti-racism and social change buoyed our content. Our mission was aligned with the trends, so everyone was happy. But by the time I’d stopped looking over my shoulder, the shoe finally started to drop.

After Social Justice Movements Waned, My Role Pivoted Into Ad Writing

It started with “budget cuts.” After President Biden’s inauguration, the energy for radical change began to die down. With no incendiary comments coming from the White House, and following the void of drama after the insurrection, political news didn’t compare to the Trump era. The public’s social fervor waned.Suddenly, my managers were meeting with the business side of the parent company more and more frequently, and our jobs were starting to change. Our freedom to pitch and write our own stories waned while more and more assigned advertising content appeared on our rosters. I could deal with this. There were more eyerolls, more sighs and snide comments, but we still had our team.Until we didn’t.It happened at 1:03 p.m. on a Friday. I was in a routine meeting with my manager when the company broke the news that half the team had been fired. We didn’t know the state of our own jobs, and instead of answers, all we heard was the repeated refrain: “budget cuts.”Almost overnight, everything changed. Over the next few weeks, we transitioned almost entirely into ad writing. Though we didn’t have the same momentum we had during the pandemic, our sites were still doing well. Yet, we were still given no explanation for the changing state of things. One second I had a dream job, the next I was stuck in an unrecognizable shadow of that former role—writing ads for brands I didn’t use.For a while, I thought it might be temporary. Maybe, I reasoned, once things calmed down, we would get answers and I would go back to the job I signed up for. In reality, things didn’t settle down. They escalated. Instead of going back to normal, my job officially shifted to branded content rather than the organic, politically-driven stories I was enticed by the promise of writing. And just when I thought this was the end of it, the remaining few members of my team were let go and the ones that weren’t quit.Suddenly, there was no creative, passionate team of writers. It was just me, alone, working alongside the team we used to roll our eyes at—with none of the promises of my job title in sight. How did I get here? Doing a job I didn’t sign up for, stuck in the same kind of toxic, profit-first environment I thought I was escaping?

Companies use the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion to entice Black talent, then parade them like trophies without actually valuing them.

BIPOC Inclusion Is a Fleeting Idea

In truth, I shouldn’t be surprised. My career trajectory followed the thing that sparked it. When Black stories were prioritized, I felt like I was at my peak, but as the fervor from the summer faded, social commentary was less in demand and so I was, in effect, obsolete.I’m sure I’m not the only one. This kind of cycle is in keeping with the more widespread media trend of Black employees becoming the voice of a company only when it’s profitable. For social media clout, for diversity specs or to keep up with whatever is in vogue, companies use the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion to entice Black talent, then parade them like trophies without actually valuing them.As the only remaining writer on the whole team, my company got to keep their “BIPOC Staff Writer” in title, but turned me into a workhorse, churning out content I never signed up for. And now that the desperate calls of media companies seeking Black stories to “pass the mic” have quieted, where else would I go? So I stay. Any other company would almost undoubtedly treat me the same.

I was assigned my first major news story when I was 17. I had been an intern at my local newspaper for about four months and, up until that point, I had only covered things like city council meetings and municipal works projects. At the time, I wasn’t particularly concerned with journalism, and I was only interning at the paper because I thought it would look good on a resume. This story would change all of that.The paper was doing an issue about suicide prevention, and I was asked to write the lead story from the perspective of a teenager. It was scary, but it felt different from everything else I had done. It wasn’t just news; it was a story. For the first time, I genuinely cared about what I was writing. I had lost a friend to suicide a few years prior, and I was eager to shed light on an issue I thought adults misunderstood at best and at worst ignored to a fatal degree. I worked tirelessly on the story, conducting a dozen interviews in three days, staying up late at night, rewriting the story about 10 times. I finally felt like I was doing something worthwhile, like I was making a difference. The day I sent the story to my editor was one of the proudest days of my life up to that point. It would be followed by one of the most disappointing. I expected an entire issue dedicated to the topic of suicide. Instead, I found my story buried under the obituaries, in an otherwise completely normal paper. The front page was a report on the most recent high school football game. I felt like all my work had been brushed under the rug. To this day, many of my close friends and family don’t know I wrote that story. I was heartbroken. I even considered giving up journalism right then and there.

The paper got angry calls from dozens of people, calling us fake news and liberal propaganda.

I Fell Into the Life of a Journalist

Despite my disappointment, I stuck around. That feeling of insignificance, of unimportance, lit a fire under me, and I was more determined than ever to make my voice heard. I doubled down, volunteering to cover more stories and learning to take photos and edit my own writing. I wanted to make myself seem as valuable as possible. It worked.I had stories in almost every issue, twice a week, some even on the front page. People in the community began to recognize me for my work, and I was officially hired on as an employee. While that was a great feeling, it didn’t last long. I was finally getting recognition but not for my voice as a writer. The stories I was writing weren’t genuine or real; anyone could have written them. It just didn’t feel like my work. However, I was content for the time being.When the pandemic hit, my small town in Wyoming was fairly unaffected, at least for a little while. For the first month or so, life was more or less business as usual. That all changed in the summer of 2020. Cases skyrocketed, businesses closed and—worst of all for me—paper sales plummeted, the primary cause being our headline story urging people to follow medical guidance and trust the science. The paper got angry calls from dozens of people, calling us fake news and liberal propaganda. It was infuriating.

We Started Bending the Truth to Please Our Audience

Even though I live in the most conservative state in the country, prior to the pandemic, most people were widely accepting of other viewpoints. That all changed over the span of about two months. My town quickly became bitterly divided on the issue of the pandemic, with many believing it was fake. Those same people were enraged when their local paper tried to fill their head with supposed propaganda, and they were furious with the author of that piece: me.I would be considered a centrist by most people, and I largely tried to avoid political affiliation. Now, for writing nothing but the truth, I was ostracized by many of my peers, even my co-workers. That’s when the paper began to change.It was subtle at first. I’d notice a sentence or two missing from a story I wrote, but I always assumed it was for word count or comprehension purposes. That went on for a few months before I finally realized what was happening: The sentences removed were always, in one aspect or another, about the pandemic. Stories entirely dedicated to the issue were buried in the paper or killed before ever reaching the printers. That same feeling of bitter disappointment I felt when my suicide piece ran began to grow in me.When the vaccine became widely available, I had hope that things would change. For a brief period, Wyoming led the country in vaccination rates. However, that didn’t last long. Soon, we were back to the same routine. By now, the censorship had become blatant. My editors would trash a story over the fear that it would upset people. I was sent down endless rabbit holes of fake news in order to write a story that appealed to our audience. I was asked to write pieces about people dying from the vaccine or masks not working to prevent sickness, but a story suggesting the opposite was unacceptable. I grew to resent my bosses and even considered handing in my resignation.I felt as if I was being asked to compromise my integrity to keep my job. When I asked to write an opinion piece on the withdrawal from Afghanistan from the perspective of a young person, I was denied. When a national news source asked to interview me, I was told I had to say no. My rage finally boiled over, and I told my publisher that unless something changed, I would walk out the door. That’s when it hit me.

My town quickly became bitterly divided on the issue of the pandemic, with many believing it was fake.

My Paper Compromised Its Principles for Profit

My publisher had an office of about a dozen people who needed a job. People who had families to feed and bills to pay. More than a journalist, he was an employer, and he chose to put his employees’ lives over the truth. We could only survive by selling papers and to sell papers, we had to keep up with the national media.Working at a local paper in the 21st century was always going to be a struggle. With the nearest TV news station operating in a neighboring state, locals felt that our paper was the best resource for their news. But with the pandemic, followed by the election, followed by more of the pandemic, people quickly stopped caring what we had to say.From my publisher’s point of view, it was a battle we couldn’t hope to win by using truth. So any opinion that could be perceived as liberal was silenced. Any story that encouraged vaccines or masks was altered and hidden. The paper became just like social media: The truth was there, but it was hard to find.Now paper sales have rebounded, our jobs are secure and the paper is fairly well regarded in the community, but I wonder if we made the right call. The paper survived, but did the news survive with it? While I understand the decision made by my publisher, I cannot respect it. Journalism was never meant to tell people what they want to hear; it is meant to tell them the truth. My paper has lost much of its journalistic integrity, and I worry I may have lost mine as well. American media in large has betrayed its foundational principles of truth and non-partisanship. I used to feel like my paper fought against that—David against a Goliath of lies. Then, I felt like it was me against my town. Now I’m not so sure what side I’m on. I resent my publisher for pushing against my morals, but I resent myself more for bending. But the truth is out there, and journalists like myself must find it. We must do what journalism was designed to do, what I set out to do, what I finally think I’ve found the strength to do: Tell the truth.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a journalist. As a child, I was so obsessed with my dad’s Sunday Times that I created my family’s own edition. Two copies of The Family Times were printed from my home computer each month, featuring interviews with my mum, dad, sister and brother about what was going on in their lives and which TV shows they were looking forward to watching. Fast-forward to today, some 15 years later, and I am working as a journalist for a news corporation in London. I absolutely love my job. I knew the second I started my training that I found my calling. During the height of the pandemic, I embarked on a six-month intensive journalism course and received top-quality teaching from leading editors in the industry. We covered everything from shorthand to interviewing skills, breaking news stories, court reporting, current affairs, media law and public affairs. Though it was a great introduction to journalism, these lessons did not provide everything I needed to be a good reporter. That, I believe, has been a series of painful experiences in my personal life over the past three-and-a-half years.

For the first time in my life, I could say I knew what gut-wrenching pain felt like.

Trauma Was My Journalism School

The first trial came in the spring of 2018, when my beloved father suffered an unexpected and fatal heart attack. My dad and I were incredibly close, and everyone who knew us well commented on how alike we were in temperament and personality. He had honesty, integrity and humility seeping from his pores, and he was respected by everyone who knew him. He was considered the rock in our family due to his calm nature and steadiness in the storms of life. The pain of losing him was unbearable, and for the first time in my life, I could say I knew what gut-wrenching pain felt like. I didn’t know how I would ever recover from such a loss. Only two years later, I experienced heartbreak for the first time in my life, another encounter with acute pain that I thought would overwhelm me. I had been with my partner for almost three years, during which time I had lost my dad, and together we had navigated our first relationships and the heady experience of falling in love for the first time. My ex-partner was an extremely special soul, and I had never had such strong feelings about anyone in that way before. I adored him, but I knew in my heart of hearts that our lives were not meant to be lived together forever. It was the hardest decision I have ever had to make, and I pray I won’t have to again. Amidst the breakup, I, like everyone else on earth, was coping with the onset of a pandemic which brought uncertainty, chaos and fear that touched every corner of the globe. Through it all, I came to learn what the Bible meant about the valley of despair. I have never felt so empty and alone in my entire life. I was navigating emotions I had never known before.Everyone has their own story about how COVID has affected their lives and the untold damage it has caused. For me, the consecutive lockdowns that the U.K. had to endure only further forced my family and I to face the reality that my dad was no longer here with us. Every night, we sat around the table for family dinner, his chair at the end of the table empty, and tried to pretend the uncertainties weren’t eating us all up inside. With each conversation, the absence of my dad’s reassuring and calm voice became more apparent.The most recent test came earlier last year when I graduated from my journalism program and struggled for six months to find employment. I went through a continuous cycle of applying for jobs and either never hearing back or attending interviews with the inevitable email replies saying, “We’ll be in touch,” or, “Please apply again when you have more experience.”I began to question whether I was in the right industry or not and if I was ever good enough for the job in the first place. It felt like the lack of control and uncertainty in my life was too much to handle. I was desperate for consistency in even one aspect of my life. On top of everything else, I was trying to settle in a new city, which felt like one challenge after another. In spite of the hardship, I have come to learn some invaluable life lessons which I believe have helped me become a better journalist.

Good Reporting Is Good Storytelling

Some journalists earn themselves reputations as bloodthirsty ambulance chasers. I’ve heard people argue that reporters are always desperate for the latest scoop and will go to any lengths to get the juicy details of a good story. Various media scandals in the U.K., such as the News of the World’s phone hacking debacle in the mid-2000s, have only proved that point. Though this is the case in some instances, I believe the best reporters possess kindness, compassion, humility and, above all, empathy.Reporters tell the ongoing story of human tragedy and suffering. Journalists, like first responders, often encounter people on the worst days of their lives, which is why we must be able to relate to those at their lowest point. The adversity I have experienced has unquestionably shaped me, and I now feel better prepared to relate to those who truly know what it is to suffer. I believe I have always cared about people’s circumstances, but experiencing pain of my own gave me a whole new perspective on how to relate to those facing hardship. I have adopted a powerful drive to encourage and uplift others who have been knocked by life and reassure them that there is a greater hope to live for.My father had big dreams for me. He used to tell me that someday I would write for the Los Angeles Times and present on BBC News at Ten, a show he watched religiously. Losing my dad without doubt made me more ambitious. I wanted to prove to myself and others that his loss didn’t diminish me. But it’s also given me a whole new level of empathy which I want to share.

The adversity I have experienced has unquestionably shaped me, and I now feel better prepared to relate to those who truly know what it is to suffer.

Empathy Made Me a Better Journalist

I’ve been able to stand alongside a friend who lost a parent to COVID-19, reach out to fathers who lost their sons to suicide and speak through a charity helpline initiative with strangers who are struggling because of the pandemic. Though I may have not gone through exactly the same experiences, I have still felt equipped to offer an encouraging word and show that there are people out there who care. I have even been surprised by my compulsion to tell and show people that they are not on their own in their pain.The last three-and-a-half years have tested me beyond what I ever thought I could cope with, but I am here and I believe I am a better journalist for it. Before, success for me was about the need to prove to myself that I had value and to show others that I was worth something. But since overcoming these personal life hurdles, I now have a new reason for wanting to be a great journalist. As I kick-start my career in journalism, I want to remain committed to my mission of making people feel heard and encouraging them when the inevitable trials and tribulations of life arise.

Media and journalism was a calling I accidentally discovered after years of trial and error in my career, a luxury many of us cannot afford. Journalism isn’t one of those careers people necessarily jump at the chance to become a part of: The hours are long. The pay is horrendous. There’s not much of a path. There are a lot of people out there trying to censor you, and if you’re in print media, you’re part of a dying breed. For me, the satisfaction of covering a good news story, getting my name out there and doing what I love makes up for all these downsides. But I’m looking to leave this career. I’m looking to leave what I love simply because as a woman in my country, it's extremely difficult.

In Sri Lanka, women who travel are not safe.

I’ve Felt Unsafe While Reporting Stories

In Sri Lanka, women who travel are not safe. This poses a risk for us female journalists, as it does almost everywhere in the world. Having been in this field for a few years, my trips need meticulous planning. In 2020, I took my first solo trip out of our city to see a tourism area impacted by the pandemic. The area was densely populated. My travel time was mainly in broad daylight—I thought I would be fine. But from the get-go, my lone presence was questioned, from the bus conductor who gave me a funny look when I asked for one ticket, to the hotel clerk who straight up asked, “Why are you traveling alone?” to the stares and leers I got on the street, on the beach and inside cafes. The hotel clerk had to get an explanation that I was traveling for work and that I work for a newspaper for him to relax. I was always hyper-aware of people looking at me and, in particular, men. All in all, I heaved a sigh of relief when I reached home unscathed. But as a journalist who does most of her interviews online or through phone calls and events through invitations to the organizations, my exposure to unsafe environments was still less than most.Last month, I was required to travel to a rural area to follow up on a one-of-a-kind story, something I was very excited to do. Trying to make my travel arrangements, my photographer had an emergency situation and canceled on me. I had to look at more expensive hotels simply because they were located on a busy road. Safe neighborhoods became a priority, as well as safer routes. Travel times were different and during limited, mostly daylight hours. Speaking to my friends, I found out all my fellow journalists who had been to those areas solo were men. In the end, I was forced to postpone my work trip so that I could match it up with a weekend some of my other friends were going to the area for leisure. Frustrating? Yes.

Gaslighting, verbal abuse and more are rampant in our newsrooms.

Female Journalists Experience Sexism in the Workplace Almost Every Day

But working as a female journalist in Sri Lanka is difficult not only because we're unsafe out in the field but also because we're unsafe in our workplaces too. My main work is in editorial, which means we sit at our desks reading through all the stories everyone else has followed up on. However, as a woman, your opinion is discounted much more easily. While most of my current workplace’s editorial staff is women, ours is the only department that is 100 percent female. Unexpectedly (or not, in our culture), the board had some concerns. Some of the typical questions we received from our initial interview with the department head went like this: “How much experience writing and editing do you have?” “Are you comfortable with tight deadlines and long work hours?” “How detail oriented are you?” As expected.Here are some of the typical questions we had to field with our interviews with the CEO: “Are you still single?” “Are you living with your parents then?” Outraged doesn’t begin to describe it. Likewise, certain members of the editorial staff easily discount our opinions on the grounds that “women are too sensitive.” Salary increases are harder to come by, and consideration regarding safe travel or working night shifts is also not given sometimes. I’ve worked at several places where the insinuation has been that as a woman, I do not deserve the pay that my male colleagues are getting, despite me doing the exact same work as them. However, even with these setbacks, I am fortunate to work in a much better office environment than some of my colleagues. My colleagues tell stories of how they cannot wear a dress to work without getting catcalled, how some of their bosses simply call them into their offices and scream at them to intimidate them into working, how some interns are hired simply for their looks and with unknown intentions. Gaslighting, verbal abuse and more are rampant in our newsrooms, with the truth being that no one will believe the women. Earlier last year, Sri Lanka’s #MeToo movement began, extremely late, regarding the stories of women in the media and the sexism and abuse we endure almost on a daily basis. The sad part is, it is not only local women who are subjected to this treatment but also women from other countries working here. They face even more issues, with derogatory comments openly following them, relying on the fact that they do not understand the local dialects and do not know enough people to make a complaint. Even the very papers we seek to publish are oftentimes rampant with this inherent sexism. Every so often, we edit and change content so obviously demeaning to women that it’s a wonder nobody thought there was anything wrong with it. We had a recurring columnist once who described the high-class ladies as “gold-digging airheads,” among other things, while other writers draw up relations between criminal records and single women, accidents and women, etc.From comments on lifestyle and marital status to commentaries on people’s wives and even daughters, we’ve seen it all. And it’s not a good place to be in.

If you were to ask me, a comedy writer, about the last place I could see myself ending up, I would confidently answer, “Sitting on the carpeted steps of the Stamford Town Center mall in Stamford, Connecticut, asking the showrunner and executive producer of the series I was writing on to let us unionize our writing staff, while casually sipping a stale Starbucks latte.”That is not a scene on anyone’s vision board, but there I was. Up to that moment, I had been writing on a reality dating television show for NBCUniversal/Bravo in the summer of 2019 for over four months. All five of the show’s writers, along with much of the other production staff, were commuting from New York City on the Metro-North train line, two hours each way, five days a week. We were beyond burnt out.This hellish commute was excruciating at the time; it’s even harder (and extremely laughable) to picture considering our not quite post-pandemic world. But remember in 2019, there was no Zoom or “don’t worry, just work from home” reality. And despite reality TV’s reputation for being light, empty and easy, working in it is the exact opposite of that.

Unionizing Our Show Would Protect Working Conditions

We were expected to be in the Stamford office as long as needed, and our presence was requested even when we didn’t need to be there, which meant staying until 10 p.m. some nights. (If you do the math, that means we’d be getting back to Brooklyn around 12 a.m.) And what’s going on in Stamford at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday? Oh, nothing, mostly just sadness.The good news was that our small but mighty writing staff bonded from the jump, as though we knew we were at war together. And we had to stick together because we received endless notes from the Bravo executives that were laden with deep, thought-provoking sentiments like, “Not funny,” and, “Delete now,” and, “Her ass looks great.” After four months of this, we’d had enough. I had written on a union show for a few months the previous year so I was a member of the Writers Guild of America, an organization built on a foundation of securing fair working conditions and substantial compensation for its members. The Stamford show was non-union, which meant we had none of these protections. The difference between writing on a union show versus a non-union show is potentially life-changing. Union shows provide a higher standard weekly rate and healthcare, and you become eligible for the holy grail of the entertainment industry: residuals. To put it into context, I have friends who write for The Daily Show who make well over $100,000 a year alone in residuals. The line between a show being union or non-union is nebulous and often doesn’t make sense. The reason NBCUniversal didn’t have to recognize us as union writers was because, under our contract, we were known as “comedy producers,” even though all we did was write—including literally writing text jokes that were on screen. But this “comedy producer” loophole is a very common way multibillion-dollar companies skirt union rules so they don’t have to pay the big bucks, which, let’s be honest, are really small bucks for them. I mean, they’re NBC-fucking-Universal.

Our small but mighty writing staff bonded from the jump, as though we knew we were at war together.

We Had to Get Approval for Our Union

After consulting with the good people at the Writers Guild, they wholeheartedly agreed that our show should be unionized and all we would need was the endorsement of both our showrunner and our executive producer to make a full union push. If NBCUniversal declined our demands, we would strike, raise hell on Twitter and hopefully shake the shit out of the Stamford locals, all 12 of them. The only catch was the show we had been writing on had been struggling to get approved by Bravo and had gone through numerous iterations and revisions. It got so bad that halfway through my time there, NBCUniversal brought in two hired guns from Los Angeles to save the show. They were seasoned pros from the nonfiction TV world and had little backstory of the less-than-ideal working conditions of the show. These were the same two people that we had to now ask to give us full union approval, which put them in a seriously precarious situation. They were brought in to save the show, shrink the budgets and literally get shit done ASAP, but now the entire writing staff was asking for union recognition and a substantial raise. The Writers Guild informed me that in order to unionize, we had to ask all of the writers, the executive producer and showrunner to leave the office and hold a meeting outside of the workplace premises. It was a dreary, gray day in Stamford, which is almost every day in Stamford, so we couldn’t meet outside. The only option was the Stamford mall, which was basically one big, sad Hot Topic. We wanted to talk in the mall’s Starbucks, but that was too crowded, so our only option was sitting on lightly carpeted steps in the open for the whole world to see. Since I was the one who led the campaign, it was my job to bring it up and kick off the meeting.

My Unionization Attempt Ignited a Passion for the Movement

I had a notebook with a list of justifications and demands as to why the show should be unionized, but I couldn’t really read my own handwriting, which made me wonder why I wrote anything down in the first place. I explained our rationale: All we do is write and put in 12-hour days; it’s a show that will air daily on Bravo and NBCUniversal is a massive company. They both listened intently and quietly, and then simply said, “No.”They explained that they agreed with us on paper, but it would be extremely difficult to get this deal done now. They promised to revisit this if there was a season two. Spoiler alert: The first thing to go in a worldwide pandemic was a reality dating show where the daters sit on each other’s laps in a hot tub. So there was no season two, but ever since our failed unionizing attempt, I have been more than encouraged by the incredible and successful drives for fairness and unions in the workplace. In March of 2021, the writers of the ABC quiz show The Chase went on a strike for the exact same recognition that we were seeking, and nearly two weeks later, they had a deal.In the fall of 2021, members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, or IATSE, threatened to go on strike if their demands for better workplace conditions weren’t met. These were many of the same crew members that worked on our reality show and were simply asking for marginal improvements, like 54 hours of rest over the weekend, increased health and pension funding and a 10-hour turnaround between shifts. Hollywood finally took them seriously after several workplace horror stories surfaced on Instagram, and the union ratified their agreement in November of 2021.

Progress often means taking a big swing and missing, only so the next person in line can have it a little easier.

The Whole Nation Is Becoming Increasingly More Pro-Union

The pro-union sentiment has continued to sweep the media and entertainment landscape. Last December, the union members at Wirecutter struck a deal with The New York Times Company for a three percent increase in wages every year. The media company Vice also reached a landmark union deal with the Writers Guild of America, East last December, and the Guild is in full-court press mode to renew their union contract with Slate. And the pro-worker sentiment hasn’t just been limited to the media industry. According to Vice, workers have been striking at Kellogg’s, John Deere and most shockingly, a Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, which ultimately became the first-ever unionized Starbucks location. This is particularly encouraging considering all the anti-union tactics these massive companies employ, like spying and sending out-of-town managers into the store to discourage unionization. With this historic union news, I can’t help but feel that if our show would have tried to unionize today, we’d get a contract immediately. But I don’t look at our union effort as a failure. Progress often means taking a big swing and missing, only so the next person in line can have it a little easier in their effort for fairness. We stand on the shoulders of all of those who have fought and put their lives on the line for a 40-hour workweek, minimum wage and overtime. And there is no other effort or movement I would rather be a part of, even if it takes place in Stamford.

“I don’t want to drag you away from those beautiful mountains to come and work for us!” chirped Natalie from her Zoom screen. Natalie—a casually chic, intimidatingly cool woman in her mid-30s—was interviewing me for an internship role at the prestigious art magazine where she worked as an editor. I had answered her call from a hostel in the European countryside where I was staying.Maybe Natalie diminishing the very opportunity she was offering me should have been a warning sign. Perhaps it could have been the first signal that the internship I was so enthused about was not as incredible a job offer as I thought. But how could I rationally evaluate my options when it didn’t feel as though I had any?

A New Job Would Improve My Self-Confidence

When I’d applied for the internship, I was immersed in a hillside lodge with a lake on my doorstep. But my beautiful surroundings did nothing to soothe how lost I was feeling. I had become unemployed during the pandemic, and traveling was a way to recapture what felt like my youth slipping away from my grasp the more I tried to hold on. Yet there was only so long I could stay on the road before my sense of directionlessness caught up with me.I had begun casting around for jobs, and the fact that this internship wasn’t paid didn’t bother me. I had savings, and working for free felt like an integral step in the creative industry, one that career advisors had long told me would be necessary on the path to achieving my long-term goals.There was also the incentive of boosting my mental health by taking on a new job. During this time in my life, my self-esteem was deeply linked to my career success. Getting this internship wouldn’t just be something to do—it would show the world, via my LinkedIn profile, that I was doing something.

My self-esteem was deeply linked to my career success.

My Boss Was Dismissive of Our Ideas for Additional Projects

I began my internship optimistically. The staff was friendly and engaged; the top-floor office was spacious and light; my fellow interns were fun and enthusiastic. My responsibility was to organize the images for the print magazine, but my day-to-day tasks weren’t overwhelmingly time-consuming, pressing or riveting.Another intern and I decided to pitch our boss some ideas for creative projects we could take on that would expand our horizons more than filling out spreadsheets or tidying bookshelves. We presented our plans: events with local artists that the magazine could host; citywide promotional campaigns for the upcoming issue. But my boss wasn’t interested in letting us do more than our job descriptions. Her dismissal of our enthusiasm felt disparaging—as though we were two kids who didn’t know what they were doing and were getting ideas above their station.I resigned myself to giving my all in every element of the work required of me. When I finished the placement with the praise that I was one of the best interns they’d ever had, it felt like all my diligence had been worth it.During my placement, friends and acquaintances sometimes made comments implying that the company was exploiting me by using my free labor. A mate once joked that I should steal some of the office’s expensive artworks to make up for my lack of pay. However, I’d never seen the terms of my employment that way. The internship felt like a step on the right path, a step I had desperately needed to take. The magazine’s staff was made up of several former interns, and I felt confident that working for free had been a necessary requirement for future employment. The internship had been a chance to get my foot in the door by showing what I was capable of.

Despite My Qualifications, the Magazine Refused to Hire Me

After I’d finished the placement, I realized by speaking with former interns that working for free was against the law unless you were a student. I’d presumed that unpaid internships were aboveboard—they were in the country I was from—but where I was living now, it was illegal to take on unpaid labor without it being a university placement. I was no student—just an unemployed graduate trying to get on the career ladder by any means possible. At this point, I felt angry: The art magazine that I devoted months of my time to prides itself on being liberal. Surely this label was a joke if their business model was built upon exploiting young people’s time? The news that I had been working illegally left a sick feeling in my stomach. I wanted more than anything to make my internship worthwhile, to prove that I hadn’t simply been wasting my time. When the magazine advertised that they were hiring, I was first in line to send over my CV, along with an enthusiastic cover letter emphasizing how happy I would be to once again be part of the team.What surprised me was how quickly the rejection came. Not 24 hours after I’d submitted my application, my former boss wrote to me with a faux-friendly how-are-you-it's-been-so-long tone. Her email was pretty to the point: She told me in not so many words that I was underqualified and there was no way in hell I could do the entry-level role they’d been advertising.The rejection cut deep and affected my self-esteem at a time when it was already dangerously low. I spent the next few months attempting to progress my career through other job roles and freelance work. Eventually, one year after I’d begun working for the company, another job opening came up. This time, I felt quietly confident: The role description shared many similarities with tasks I’d done during my internship. By now, my CV had broadened with some impressive relevant experience. Surely this time, they would see how qualified I was?When I wasn’t immediately rejected, I held out hope that this time, they were taking my application seriously. But when two weeks went by without a response, I sent a follow-up email. My former boss replied instantly, informing me that she’d made a shortlist and I wasn’t on it.This was the moment in which I instantly knew I wanted nothing more to do with the company. I doubted they had even looked at my updated CV and noted all the impressive career moves I’d made since working for them. I was forever ingrained in their minds as an enthusiastic intern, ready and available to do all the menial work for free, but never deserving of the respect to be paid for my time.I remember how excited I had been when I was first invited for an interview. I could not have predicted the extent to which my self-confidence would be degraded by months of having my time, labor and abilities disrespected.

I realized by speaking with former interns that working for free was against the law unless you were a student.

I Know I Will Reach My Career Goals

The one thing this experience gave me was the need to believe in myself all the more. I’ve now realized that I don’t need a professional LinkedIn job title to show the world I’m thriving—in fact, hiding behind people’s outward profiles of success probably lies a very different story. Knowing this provides some comfort when I come across people my age whose career trajectories mirror what I had always envisioned for myself but, so far, haven’t achieved. I try to remind myself that I will reach those goals, just in my own time. I haven’t accepted unpaid work since my internship ended. Having my job applications rejected was the ultimate indication that giving up my time for free was no guarantee of securing a future opportunity. The only thing I can be thankful for is the lesson I’ve learned: I’ll never work for free again.

Like many, I spent my teenage years consuming glossy magazines and watching episodes of Sex and the City. My dream life was simple: move to the city, become a magazine editor and, from there, live a life of glamour, glitz and acclaim.After I got my degree in journalism, I realized that this wouldn’t be as easy as I thought. I worked hard, made myself available and went above and beyond to prove my worth. But I would find that the sought-after roles were frequently given to those who were friends and relatives of senior management teams.

I Found the Perfect Job in an Affluent Part of the Country

So, at 22, during a worldwide recession, I gave up on my dream. As I packed my things and headed away from the city, I looked at roles that were “media-aligned” just trying to stay close to the end goal. I spent the next 10 years of my working life flogging ad space and learning about the joys of digital marketing. When my eldest child was born, I decided to start sending travel pitches to magazines and news outlets, and from there, I started getting bylines. I could see that my vision was still within reach—it was just taking a bit longer than planned.It was then that I found a local editor’s job for a lifestyle website. It was a digital publication, founded by a respected journalist and editor, which recommended great shows and fine dining without needing to be in the big city. It could all be achieved by living in the countryside. I applied and was over the moon when I got a call for an interview. The day of the interview came. I made my way to an incredibly affluent part of the country and was offered the job immediately. The first red flag should have been raised when the person interviewing me referred to the person I was replacing as “totally crazy,” but I was too distracted with happiness. As part of my role, I would get to eat out for free, stay at the best hotels and get to write about it. It sounded like the life that I envisioned for myself as a teenager, but I would be able to work it around family life.After I started, a new advertising executive came on board to work with me. Then my nightmare began.

Then my nightmare began.

My Colleague Always Reminded Me of My Economic Status

Sandra was older than me and from an extremely wealthy part of the area. She had plenty of old money, a fleet of Ferraris, horses and boats and a total obsession with her tiny village. Immediately, we started to clash on every aspect of the website. My role was to use my experience to create content that covered the length and breadth of our patch, mixing in cheaper places to visit as well as the more expensive and high-end. She was then meant to approach them for advertising elsewhere on the site.Sandra would complain as soon as I sent her a list of businesses to get in touch with, citing them as “shit.” She would often fulfill her entire advertising quota by selling ads to her friends and family in the area so that any editorial pieces had to include them. Content would end up biased and dominated by businesses and things that she liked. She would often refer to the town I lived in as “rough” and “poor” and would argue that including recommendations from my area—and others—would ruin the exclusive feel of the publication and upset advertisers.Over time, I lost all editorial control. After approaching my boss about some of my run-ins with Sandra, she decided I needed to forward all of my ideas and recommendations to her or Sandra for approval. Part of the role involved writing reviews on prestigious private schools in the area. I would visit fancy schools and interview the staff, putting together in-depth guides for prospective parents. These were paid for by the schools as well, so I was informed I could only write positive things.After one visit, Sandra called me and asked if I had a “nicer car” to turn up in, as my Japanese SUV wasn’t selling the right image of the publication. I wasn’t earning enough by any length to casually buy a Mercedes as she suggested. I was often expected to pay out of my pocket and use my equipment when working. Claiming expenses was a total minefield. Some months I would spend hundreds on tips, parking and gas, getting nothing back due to the small print in my contract.

The Job Led Me to a Nervous Breakdown

The beginning of the end was when one of the best hotels in the country asked to be reviewed. My boss decided that it was far too important for me to go and, undisclosed to me, invited Sandra to join her. They had a great weekend living it up in a five-star resort, drinking and bonding. From that day on, she decided that Sandra would review places moving forward, and I was to write up the experience on her behalf. Sandra would send me patchy phone camera images and declare that she had “a few cheeky cocktails,” forgetting to get any details. I would then have to write articles based on snippets such as, “The beef had some kind of sauce. It was nice,” and, “The decor was like an old lady’s house.” It was impossible, and it impacted what I could write. My boss started criticizing my work even more. At this point, I had regularly occurring panic attacks. I had come into the job with all the confidence in the world, having proved to myself that I was capable of a writing career. However, every little bit of belief I had worked hard to achieve was being chipped away, one snarky email at a time. After two years, I had a nervous breakdown and ended up on medication. To this day, I still don’t quite know whether I was fired or quit because when I rang my boss to hand in my notice, I was sent a termination agreement. I went to my union, which was helpful and provided legal advice, but established that because I was being vilified for my socio-economic status, essentially for being broke, they couldn’t do anything to help.

Over time, I lost all editorial control.

I Ignored the Red Flags to Chase a Title

I decided then to return to freelancing completely. Slowly but surely, my confidence returned as the feedback I received from my ideas and writing switched back to positive. Now, a few years down the line, I am happy, my mental health is a lot better and I work for myself rather than for the whims of others. In hindsight, I was so fixated on getting a job title that I ignored all the red flags. And the fact Sandra couldn’t see past my grubby, 8-year-old car, well, that says a lot more about her than it does about me.A few days after I left that position, an email alert popped up in my inbox for my old job. It sold the same dream but also a much higher salary than I had received. As time passed, that same email popped up more than a few more times. In the end, I believe the role was filled by someone with whom the boss had attended Oxford. Funny.

Fewer people than ever trust traditional media, according to the results of Edelman’s annual trust barometer, in which more than half of people surveyed stated they agreed with the statement, "Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations." Fake news. Virtue signaling. Political media bias. Disinformation versus misinformation. Opinion pieces put forward as fact without clarification. Intentional obfuscation. Woke culture “news” stories. The list of reasons why people are increasingly distrustful of media integrity goes on. Long gone are the days when the media lived up to its promise of being honest brokers of information, but if you stop and think about it, we probably need to ask ourselves: Were they ever?

We’re stuck in a perpetual loop of intellectual poverty until something changes.

Working in the Media Made Me Wonder if I Was Contributing to the Problem

In a letter to John Norvell in 1807, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, ‘By restraining it to true facts and sound principles only.’ Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers.” Two centuries later and this has never been truer. To be honest, the only real amendment I’d make to this 200-year-old testament is to swap the word “newspaper” for “media.” During my years at News Corp, I often found myself silently pondering a double-barreled question that simmered away in the back of my mind every time we ran another “if it bleeds, it leads” style story: Is this story true, useful, relevant or necessary, and if not, am I then part of the problem? The jury is still out.I had intentionally joined the notorious “news” organization to work on human interest topics such as personal finances, consumer technology and business news, yet found myself routinely fighting to have my stories seen above the fold simply because the death, drugs and divorce style celebrity content attracted more interest, eyeballs and ad revenue. It was a heartbreakingly repetitive cycle.At the center of the entire demise of quality journalism and fact-checked, substantiated news is the pernicious corporate emphasis on maintaining steady growth in shareholder return (n.b. growing advertising revenue) rather than protecting the interests of consumers and businesses, as is clearly outlined in the mandate of the FCC. But herein lies the problem: The FCC is accountable to the U.S. Congress, a cadre of politicians elected to uphold laws that represent the best interests of the country. Yet politicians are elected by voters, voters who are swayed by public opinion, public opinion which is shaped by the media. As William J. Federer said, “Whoever controls media controls the country,” so we’re stuck in a perpetual loop of intellectual poverty until something changes.I’d argue the best place for us to start a shift toward truth is to address the issue of fake news, blatantly false or misleading information presented as news, often aimed at damaging a person or entity’s reputation and/or increasing ad revenue.

Fact-Checking Is More Important Than Ever

Not too long ago, when we wielded the term “media,” we were essentially referring to television, radio and newspapers. Today, what was once a triarchy of media channels has transmogrified into an increasingly multiheaded monster, not unlike the legendary Hydra. The mythical Hydra is a fitting metaphor for today’s existent media landscape; the beast was described as having many heads and faces, possessing poisonous breath and an offensive or even deadly scent, which sounds like a fairly apropos description of Fox News (whose somewhat ironic former tagline was "Fair and Balanced").Today’s ever-present, multichannel media now has the power to subtly, swiftly and subversively manipulate, influence, persuade and pressurize society in both positive and negative ways, thanks in no small part to an unprecedented global hyperconnectivity via smart devices that are in billions of hands. This access means that “news,” real or fake, now spreads at a pace where a lie can spread faster than the truth that refutes it. Seems we are moving too fast to uncover the truth of things.As an example, say you come across a controversial story on multiple news sites, shared across social media by friends and family. You turn to Google and search the keywords of said story and are presented with thousands of search results, oftentimes organized in descending order based on the publishing site’s popularity, search ranking and the number of shares of said story. At face value, it could appear that the top-ranked story is the most accurate and “true,” yet this isn’t always true.More often than not, algorithms and popularity scores are defining “truth” long before what is reported and printed has been fact-checked. As a society, we’ve been subtly and consistently conditioned to believe headlines on popular mastheads, the top search results and most tweeted and reposted content without question. Accordingly, controversial stories (n.b. fake news) are reported with little if any reliance on fact, under a deeply dismissive and reductive assumption that the masses are sheeple who will blindly accept what we read, hear or see as true because it made the “news.”This is not to say that all fake news stories are malicious or intentionally deceptive. Some are simply misinformed or misreported around a kernel of truth. A great example of this is when back in 2014, France implemented its “right to disconnect” labor agreement, which sought to protect employees from overworking outside of traditional work hours. Out of nowhere, a story emerged that expanded upon the fact of France’s new agreement with the fiction that it banned work emails after 6 p.m., a fiction that was regurgitated dozens of times worldwide. A wonderful fiction, but fiction nonetheless.There’s a multisensory network effect in place here that is hard to recognize until we take a step back; an article published on HuffPost or NYT, shared on social media, emailed to your inbox and discussed at your local cafe or bar, validates the idea or story, irrespective of truth. Legitimacy, therefore, results more from repetition than fact. Accordingly, it’s incumbent on each and every one of us to slow down, stop and think and take a moment to fact-check when something doesn’t quite feel right, rather than simply tow the party line and accept all that we see and hear as true.

It’s incumbent on each and every one of us to slow down, stop and think.

As Readers, We Should Be Intentional About What We Focus On

Al Franken was dead on the money when he said that media biases are much bigger than conservative or liberal; they're about getting ratings, about making money, about doing stories that are easy to cover. There’s a reason media publishers refer to us as consumers, defined as “a person or a group who intends to purchase goods, products or services.” The purchase price here is our attention, so it’s reasonable to assume that if we shift our attention, we regain some of our power.Fake news, clickbait headlines, political polemic and propaganda designed to capture our attention aren’t going to go away anytime soon, but if we place more value on our time and attention, intentionally choose where we look and what we consume and take the time to think for ourselves and call bullshit as required, then we begin to erode the robber barons of their powers, providing a rare opportunity to be heard and begin moving the needle back toward our intellectual favor.

A career is defined as a chosen pursuit.I was lucky enough to find two.Pragmatically, it makes more sense to opt for a career path that is your vocation as well as financially lucrative. What is even better is when your hobby becomes a hustle.

I realized that having the knowledge of the human mind and what makes it tick facilitated me in writing book reviews.

Journalism Became My Side Hustle

Growing up, my family wanted me to be a business graduate since that was the popular field of choice during that time. When I chose to pursue psychology during my A-levels (high school), it was seen as an odd choice since in a Third World country, the obvious career choices are being either a doctor or an engineer. I, however, was quite certain about psychology being my true calling since I felt that I had the instincts and skills required to excel in that field. I had always been good at writing essays and literary analyses in school. During my A-level summer break, on a whim, I emailed the draft of a book review I had written to the culture section of a leading newspaper in my country. A few days later, I heard back from them that they were going to publish it in their newspaper.So began my career as a literary critic.Having been a voracious reader since childhood, it was more of a habit than a chore for me. I was always someone who tried to read between the lines, always dissecting and analyzing what the writer meant by their words. I also had strong opinions about what I read and was able to articulate them well in writing. Hence, writing literary analyses and book reviews came naturally to me.I realized that having the knowledge of the human mind and what makes it tick facilitated me in writing book reviews that were psychologically astute in how they dig deep into the characters’ psyche. Initially, it was mind-boggling to me that newspapers were paying me for what I considered my hobby or that my opinion was worth publishing in a leading daily. Pretty soon, I branched out into writing for international publications, including those in the U.S., U.K., UAE and Ireland. Book publishers from the U.S. and U.K. started reaching out to me, asking if they could send me manuscripts of their upcoming books.The most fascinating aspect of this was that this career progression was entirely in the digital sphere and on merit. I knew no one in the journalism industry in person. They were approaching me solely on the basis of word of mouth and my published works. I had heard that in order to get your foot in the door in the journalism sector, one needs to have connections or at least have one book published. I had neither, which is probably why it seemed ludicrous to me at first.It was not all a cakewalk, though. I also had to face crushing rejections and harsh criticism from some of the well-known editors. One of the best pieces of advice I got early on from a supportive editor was that as a journalist, you need to grow a thick skin and not take criticism to heart. That advice came in handy many times. Some of the criticism was justified since professionally, I was still in nascency. However, some of the critics were downright cruel. I remember after I sent in a review of an American book to an editor of a popular pop culture website, she wrote back inquiring why as an Asian writer was I writing about a Western book by a white writer? Such incidents were a great learning ground for me, though, and taught me how to maintain my own credibility and how to negotiate on my own terms. They taught me that good work speaks on its own, and many times, you have to drive a hard bargain, especially when working with editors, so that your work remains authentic and not a diluted version of what you set out to say.

If we are passionate enough, we can find a way to integrate our hobbies into our vocation.

Finding a Balance Was Key for Me

On the other hand, my career as a psychologist was flourishing too. I continued to do my bachelor’s, master’s and then postgraduation in clinical psychology. However, since the eligibility criteria to practice as a psychologist is a postgraduate degree, which I was in the process of getting, the progress was slower on that front. I had not started earning as a psychologist, but thanks to my freelance journalism career, I was making quite a lot of money. The exchange rate difference helped as well in making it more profitable since all the payments were in dollars or pounds.In this way, I was able to follow my passion, which was to practice clinical psychology in a public health sphere, catering to people belonging to the lower-income class. Since working at such a nonprofit organization did not pay handsomely, I was able to balance that out with my earnings from my journalism career.Hence, turning my childhood hobby of reading and writing into a lucrative hustle augments my sense of satisfaction, as it does not feel like work. It made me realize that career choices are no longer a case of either/or, and if we are passionate enough, we can find a way to integrate our hobbies into our vocation.

It's early January and I’m preparing to return to work after the holiday break. The world of freelance journalism is fragile even at the best of times; workers are underpaid and underemployed, forcing them to support their writing with more predictable forms of employment. But one of the few benefits this anxiety-ridden situation offers is a near mandatory two-week holiday for Christmas. Editors, possessing a semblance of job security and union-backed, non-work perks, are certainly not willing to let the editing process creep into their well-earned holiday break. For anybody who relies on pitching ideas out of the blue as part of their livelihood, everything slows in December to a near standstill, jolting back into action on the first Monday of January in alarming fashion.That fallow period means a lot of time for writers to twiddle their thumbs, as those who spend a not insubstantial amount of time living in their job face down their sudden incapacity to work. Naturally, the default reaction is to open Twitter and contribute to annual, community-wide trends. All manner of round-ups appear, and onlookers gaze bemusedly at this new form of Christmas window shopping: Writers share their good writing, then their favorite writing from other writers, then a smattering of professional recaps, then some cute, festive photos for good measure. At a time when in-person festivities feel stranger than ever before, the flurry of this sort of content signifies the start of the Advent period. In a relentless profession driven by well-meaning if ruthless competition, it’s nice for that community to finally, collectively exhale and shut up shop for the year.However, not content with publicly packing down between Christmas and New Year, declarations that this year will be the year when the phone stays switched off over the holidays quickly appear. The decision implies self-love combined with a handy out-of-office. For some, guilting themselves into quitting is the only way to take that digital detox (just as it’s very easy to announce a break from social media, it’s also very easy to publicly break that promise). But it also comes with a hint of smugness: “Now that I’ve shared all my successes, I’m going to go one better and quit this thing that you all can’t shake. See ya!”

That principled stance lasted a grand total of 22 hours.

My Social Media Job Gives Me an Excuse to Keep Scrolling

I’m very much part of that trend. Having shared my final article of the year, I tweeted my own “I’m logging off for some quality time” notice on December 23. That principled stance lasted a grand total of 22 hours before I began firing off angry 3 a.m. tweets about sports. Forget the first hurdle. I’d barely made it out of the blocks before succumbing to temptations.It will come as no surprise that I’m addicted to social media. The addiction is not platform-based; I’ve been glued to my phone since I got my hands on a brick-like device at 13 years old. But social media’s capacity to seep into the cracks between work and pleasure means it’s a more astute adversary than, say, Snake.Nowhere does this exist more than in work. During the pandemic, I took on a social media job, average pay for when journalism was quiet. It was a self-destructive move borne of economic necessity, but the most damaging aspect was its just-about-passable justification for doing nothing about my addiction. “I’m working!” I’d claim to my friends as I sat on the sofa, reposting the occasional bit of content for work but mostly just scrolling endlessly.

Online Engagement Is the Only Way I Judge My Work

It was only when I eventually quit my job that I realized my behavior was bordering on psychotic. Attempts to deal with it had just meant I’d found more creative ways to entrench the addiction. Turning off notifications meant I’d circle the internet, checking my tweets for engagements, seeing if anybody had tweeted me, followed me, unfollowed me, read my messages, mentioned me in an article. It was horrid.That addiction has had a knock-on effect on my writing. In place of an unshakable belief in your own ability, these days, ways of judging the “quality of work” comes through online engagement. The more people that engage with it online, the better it is, right?It’s part and parcel of today’s media landscape. The race-to-the-bottom nature of news journalism, in particular, has led to a whole value system based on clicks, engagement and digital populism. A few months ago, a person on my feed announced she’d secured a job she’d dreamed of since she was a child—as an SEO journalist, charged with pumping articles full of internet-friendly buzzwords to ensure people click on her article, not somebody else’s.

It was only when I eventually quit my job that I realized my behavior was bordering on psychotic.

My Goal Is to Stop Sharing Everything All the Time

Social media is embedded into the process of writing at such a level that it’s easier to imagine the end of everything than a world without social media. Work-wise, in place of face-to-face meetings, professional relationships are fostered online, and it’s the prime trading ground for work callouts, scoops, trends, subjects, breaking news and insider gossip. On a wider level, ideas are formed because of stuff that’s happening online; it’s then written (usually online) and shared online. How can we make this healthier? One way is by targeting focused communities of people interested in niche things on subjects, not personalities. Reaching a thousand people might not seem like much, but a thousand passionate people are certainly more supportive than a hundred thousand onlookers. The second is to log off for shorter periods, more regularly, without telling anybody.And that’s the final thing. My New Year’s resolution is simple: Stop sharing everything online! In the new year, I will be tweeting less, browsing less and hopefully learning to be more like myself, away from my internet disguise.