Okay, so here’s the thing. I wasn’t even going to write anything about this, but I kept thinking about it, and… well, here we are. The news. Media. All of it. It’s so much, all the time. I feel like I’m constantly being hit in the face with some new disaster, scandal, or whatever, and half the time I’m not even sure if it’s real or just noise. Probably both.
I don’t know when it got like this — maybe it was always like this, and I just didn’t notice because I was younger or more naive or just didn’t care enough to notice? But now I can’t really look away, even though I want to. It’s weird. Like, I’ll be doomscrolling on Twitter (sorry, X, or whatever Elon calls it now) at 1 AM, reading stuff I know is bad for me, and I can’t stop. There’s this pressure to stay “informed”—but” what does that even mean anymore?
I read this Nieman Lab article the other day, kind of on accident, actually, and it talked about news fatigue. Like… real exhaustion from trying to keep up with it all. And it hit hard. I used to love reading the paper (yeah, the actual paper with pages and ink that gets on your fingers), and now I’m basically scared to open a news app in the morning. Wild how that changed.
Also? Nobody agrees on anything. Like, two people can read the same headline and come away thinking opposite things. It’s kind of terrifying. And media outlets — not naming names — definitely lean into that, because division gets clicks. It makes me feel gross sometimes. Not even angry, just… tired.
There’s this podcast—I can’t remember the exact episode, but it was from NPR — that talked about balance in news and how hard it is to actually do that when everyone accuses you of being biased, no matter what. And they’re right. Like, someone will scream “leftist propaganda,” and another will say “corporate mouthpiece” on the same post. So… what’s the truth then?
Maybe we don’t want the truth. Maybe we just want someone to tell us we’re right. Honestly, that scares me a little.
Anyway, I’ve kind of fallen in love with smaller newsletters lately. Like, those indie folks who just write what they see, with typos and messy formatting and all. It’s refreshing. Not because it’s perfect — god, some are a mess — but because it’s not trying so hard to be a “brand.” Just people. Talking to other people.
I found this one on Substack the other day (not going to plug it, but maybe I should?), and the writer literally started the post with “I have no idea what I’m doing,” and I was like — SAME. That honesty? I’ll take that over 10 polished think pieces that all say the same thing in different fonts.
And I get it — the big orgs need funding, clicks, paywalls, or whatever. I’m not mad about that. Journalism costs money. But the whole thing feels like it’s eating itself. There was a piece in Columbia Journalism Review that said paywalls might be saving news but also maybe killing it. I don’t know. It’s complicated. Most things are.
Sometimes I daydream about what it’d be like if we all just slowed down. Like, really slowed down. No 24-hour cycle. No BREAKING NEWS banners are flashing at me while I’m trying to eat toast. Just… stories. Real ones. Deep dives, even if it takes a week or a month. Let the truth breathe a little, you know?
But that’s probably wishful thinking. The machine keeps turning. Still, I hold out some hope — messy, wobbly hope — that we’ll figure something out. That somewhere between the noise and the nonsense, we’ll find ways to tell each other the truth again. Or at least try.
Anyway, sorry if this was a bit all over the place. My head’s kind of scrambled, and this stuff just makes me feel a lot. If you read this far — hey, thanks. Really. Let’s try not to drown in the headlines, yeah?