Media Diaries

Jarred Irby

35 years old Missouri

Recorded Dec. 31, 2020

Illustrations by Agata Nowicka

9:00AM I wake up and check the iPhone notifications from a group chat with friends. One of my friends has texted “RIP Joe Clark.” I Google this and learn that Joe Clark, a New Jersey principal, has died. My friends and I share a lot of news in our group chat. We talk every day. It’s been an ongoing conversation for four and a half years.

We’re nerds, kind of, and pretty left-leaning. I’m Christian. There’s another person who’s Jewish. Another person who’s Hindu. I think everyone else is mostly atheist/agnostic. I generally trust what people share in the chat. Usually someone’s vetted it. Mostly. We all pretty much think the same, but we will let each other know if we’re being stupid.

9:05AM I get an email notification from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on my iPhone. I’m a subscriber. Josh Hawley, one of my senators from Missouri, is in the news for announcing that he will object to the Electoral College certification of Joe Biden’s win.

10:00AM At work, I scroll Twitter occasionally on my phone to see what people are tweeting about Josh Hawley. I search Josh Hawley mentions in the search bar, checking to see how the conversation is going in the wider Twitter world.

That’s the nice thing about Twitter, that you can see the broader conversation happening in real time. Although I don’t think it’s the best representation of what’s factual, it often tells you how people are thinking and reacting. Most people aren’t going to go, “Well, I did a lot of research about this subject.” More like, “I saw this, and I’m mad.” I had a friend who had his very evangelical, right-wing parents over, and they’re like, “Joe Biden’s gonna put us in cages.” Well, I don’t know how you got to that conclusion. I would at least like to understand the process of people getting to conclusions like that.

10:30AM I see a Facebook post about a shooting of a high school classmate that happened over the weekend. Surveillance video has just been released by KSDK, a local news station.

I found out a few days ago on Facebook that Rico had been shot. Many times, especially in St. Louis—just because it’s a small city, and everyone knows each other—people will act out over this sort of stuff happening. There’s been a significant social media outcry about Rico getting shot. He was really well-liked, especially in the Black community. Meanwhile, there’s a lot of conversation going on in the city about the incident. From the general public, you’d assume it was a terrible situation. But I’ve heard that there were some premeditated aspects of the shooting. I’ve been getting updates from friends, but I’ve been looking up a lot of articles to be able to follow the news story. St. Louis is a very old city, and we have old-city problems. So I follow a lot of local news.

11:00AM I log in to Yahoo News to read a few articles while working and preparing for a Zoom court hearing I have to attend in a few hours. Yahoo aggregates things that are of interest to me. It’s scary—they probably have like eighteen years of consumer data on me. But it’s also clickbaity, which I kind of like. You can see what’s a buzzing topic. It’s mostly mildly interesting, like, “I’ll click on that.”

12:00PM A friend who watches wrestling sends me a link to a YouTube compilation: a year of “takes” from Jim Cornette, a wild wrestling personality. I listen to this while cleaning up and making lunch.

12:30PM A friend in my group chat mentions that his antibody test for COVID-19 came back negative. Another friend, who works in healthcare, sends an article that says a taste test might be able to indicate people who are more susceptible to COVID-19.

3:00PM I see on social media that people are talking about another round of stimulus checks. I Google-search for a few articles on the issue. I send an article to my wife from Advance Local media that says the second round of stimulus checks should be appearing in bank accounts soon.

3:30PM I turn on NBC Sports to watch the last thirty minutes of Liverpool versus Newcastle. I browse Twitter mentions of the game and see people ribbing at Liverpool for not being able to win and at the team’s manager, Jürgen Klopp, being really emotional and not taking the blame for the draw.

5:30PM While making dinner at home by myself, I open the Stitcher app to listen to a podcast about the Tottenham Hotspur football club. If I’m in the kitchen, I’ll listen to something for sure, usually a podcast.

7:00PM I see a post on the Nextdoor app about an accident that happened near my house today. I live on a main thoroughfare in the city. If I hear sirens going down the street, I’ll look at a few local sites and see what’s going on. Like, “Oh, that was too many police cars.”

8:00PM I do a workout. I listen to a Logic album, and I think I hear the voice of Solid Snake from a video game. I Google it and skim an article from DualShockers.

9:00PM I watch Tenet with family and read a few things online about the film. It’s my third time watching the movie, so I browse a few articles from a Google search while it’s on.

I don’t like watching news on TV; I do like reading it online. I’m definitely not an anti-news, anti-journalist person. I know some of that’s creeping up. I know of some of the movements to help get good journalists into different spheres of influence, whether that’s in small rural areas, places that can’t afford a good journalism publication. I know that that’s extremely important.

I do worry about, you know, everyone’s grandma, who gets wrapped up in conspiracy theories because she’s online.

Reid Barden

17 years old North Carolina

Recorded Jan. 8, 2021

9:00AM I wake up and sit in bed for a while to scroll through Instagram. I see several interesting posts from Fox News, Prager University, and Newsmax.

I get almost all of my news from Instagram, probably because it’s on my phone, which is almost always in my pocket, so it’s accessible. Also because Instagram is not solely based on news. I follow friends as well as news accounts. Even if I’m not specifically trying to learn about current events, I’m bound to see news on Instagram. I don’t watch too much TV, and I think it’s fairly important to stay up to date on topics that impact myself and others.

Since I’m on Instagram quite often, I might as well get something a little bit more beneficial. I think I could definitely be a little bit more open to other news sources. But I pick the ones that I pick mainly just because they align with my views the most.

9:30AM I came across a video post from PragerU with the title “Do College Students Believe in God?” The video was shot around the campus of Arizona State University. In the video, students are asked for their thoughts on religion and how they think

religion impacts their life. I find it interesting that some of the students said they were open to the idea of a god, but that they personally weren’t big believers in this theory. They also said that they didn’t believe having God in their lives would impact them in a positive way.

I also see a post from Fox News stating that the woman killed in the US Capitol was identified as an Air Force veteran.

In the second paragraph it states that she was “a strong supporter of President Trump.” I find it interesting that Fox decided to include the woman’s political affiliation.

10:30AM Later in the morning, I come across an Instagram Story from @itsnotthebee claiming that Twitter has just banned President Trump from posting and may completely remove his account. I started following the Babylon Bee, a Christian satire account, because other people that followed them reposted their articles and whatnot. It also came up on my “suggested” posts fairly often. Not the Bee is a spin-off.

I’m a little half-and-half in being convinced about this topic, because I’m not really sure how Twitter is run and if it’s constitutional for them to censor someone like this. One thing I am positive of is that this is 100 percent censorship of someone who does not agree with Twitter’s political agenda, and that I completely disagree with. I think the First Amendment is absolutely one of if not the most important amendments in the Constitution, and no one should be denied this right regardless of their political affiliation, race, gender, or religion.

The same account posted a second story, which I view directly after, that has a post from NBC News stating that President Trump has been banned from Facebook and Instagram.

It states that he will be locked out of each account for at least twenty-four hours. President Trump being censored is pretty hard for me to believe, considering that free speech is one of our amendments and one of the reasons that the US was founded. I just can’t believe that people are actually censoring the president of the United States because of a Twitter post. But multiple different accounts and news stations from both political sides have stories on this topic, so it must be true. The only reason I’m not completely surprised is that so many people truly despise our president.

I see a Fox News post about an NBA player that stood for the national anthem while every other one of his teammates kneeled. I read that this player’s name is Meyers Leonard and he plays for the Miami Heat. I am glad to see some professional athletes who are not afraid to stand up for their beliefs and the national anthem. I have a tough time understanding how someone standing for the national anthem is considered “news,” but I’m not surprised, based on the world we’re currently living in.

3:00PM After I have finished the majority of my schoolwork, I scroll Instagram again and see an update regarding President Trump’s Twitter account. It’s a post from Fox News stating that President Trump has deleted the necessary tweets and will receive his Twitter account back. He should be reviving his account in about twelve hours. I see a few comments on the same post stating that Twitter is a private company, so it has the power to do as it wants. But I don’t do any more research on this.

8:00PM After dinner, I scroll Instagram yet again and find another post from Fox News, stating that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants President Trump to be impeached via the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

She claims that he needs to be impeached for inciting a riot at the Capitol. She also urged the vice president and the cabinet to remove Trump, it says. Lastly, she stated that Trump is “a very dangerous person” and he committed an “act of sedition.” I was not surprised to see this, but I do think it’s a little odd that she would call for the removal of President Trump if she’s so confident in the results of the election that she says he lost.

One thing that bothers me on Instagram in general is that I feel like everyone takes celebrity opinions and puts them over an average person’s opinion. Just because this person has access to followers, their opinion matters more—they’re taken as news over an actual news source.

Ainslie Vandersluis

53 years old Michigan

Recorded Jan. 13, 2021

7:30AM I wake up to WCSG, a local Christian radio station. I listen to the morning news, the weather, and the traffic report.

8:15AM On my phone, I open my email app and see a newsletter from MLive, a local Michigan news site. It has headlines from Michigan and the US. I clicked on a report on the weather and an article about Michigan’s best beer.

8:45AM I glance at Google News on my phone. Most days, I scroll through, picking and choosing the articles based on their headlines. I wouldn’t say that I pick one publication and follow it, though I like Bloomberg or Reuters or BBC, something that’s a little more credible. Just don’t send me people’s blogs. I don’t care. When I’m on Google News, I cannot tell you how many times I think, Don’t show me stories from a blog. Now that I’ve watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix, I’m extra careful. I’ve had discussions with my phone lying nearby, and then later, I’ll see an ad about the conversation, or a story will come up about it, and I’ve done zero searches on it. I don’t like that at all.

At times, I see stories that are being pushed, like by a PR firm. A couple years ago, there were all kinds of stories about measles and anti-vaxxers. I said to my husband, “You wait and see, some drug company’s got a vaccine that they’re gonna start advertising.” Sure enough, there was a new vaccine soon after. That makes me not trust journalism. I appreciate more investigative journalism. But this is a personal peeve.

9:15AM I open the WZZM 13 app on my phone. Michigan’s dine-in restaurant ban is expected to continue for two more weeks. WZZM has also released a photo of a man holding what looks like a fire extinguisher at the Capitol last week, who is suspected to have been connected to the death of a Capitol Police officer. Today, Michigan’s old governor Rick Snyder has been charged for his role in the Flint water crisis. I glance at the weather again. If there’s breaking news, the WZZM app will send me an alert. I’ll glance at it and think, Was this worth my stopping what I’m doing and looking at it? Do I care? Or do I not care?

9:30AM I open the Apple News app. I read a Washington Post article about an FBI report days before the riot that warned violence at the Capitol was possible. I feel like that’s a pretty solid publication, somewhat balanced on both sides.

I have a conversation with my youngest son, who is in the room with me. He’s much more liberal in his views than I am. I wouldn’t call myself a conservative anymore, but I still lean more that way, whereas he’s very socialist. We were talking about the FBI: Should they be watching out for the people who were at the Capitol? How does that affect free speech?

There’s tension between the FBI protecting us and them keeping tabs on people and communication. When does the FBI start spying on everything that we do? I don’t know that I have any answers, but trading safety for privacy is certainly something to be aware of.

On the Apple News app, I read a Fox News story about how Betty White plans to spend her ninetyninth birthday in quarantine and a CNN story reporting a new daily record of COVID deaths. I go to covidactnow.org to see updates on COVID in Michigan. And I read a Quartz article about whether or not you can spread COVID after being vaccinated.

I take Fox with a grain of salt, always. I guess I probably view every news organization with a grain of salt. I try to suss out where it falls on the spectrum. I wouldn’t say that I exclusively follow either liberal or conservative journalism. It depends on the topic. I want to try to expose myself to both sides, wherever possible. I don’t have a lot of patience for extremes.

1:20PM I read the Sunday edition of the Grand Rapids Press in print. I read through Parade, Life & Culture, Perspective, Obituaries, Business, and the advice columns.

I love paper ads. I just do. I don’t know why—I use the Meijer grocery store app and I order my groceries. But I like to look at the paper ads for the sales. Looking through the Grand Rapids Press, Menards had an ad and Aldi had an ad. All of that’s available online. But there’s something about paper. I don’t know. I guess I’m just old school.

3:30PM I listen to an episode of The Dropout podcast from ABC, about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.

4:30PM I listen to an episode of NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!

I listen to podcasts infrequently. My husband will recommend them, and if we drive we’ll listen to podcasts, say, on the way to and from the beach. It’s something that we enjoy together. Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History is one that we’ve always listened to. It has all these really deep dives and details. It’s just so good.

5:30PM My husband reads me an alert from Yahoo News about Trump’s impeachment.

Having Donald Trump in office, I avoided as much news about him as I could. I just cannot—I can’t hear what he says, I can’t, and yet I’m still trying to be somewhat aware of what’s going on in the world. My husband will start off—because he knows it will get my goat—he’ll say, “Your president said on Twitter… ”

6:00PM The WZZM News app sends an update about COVID restrictions.

7:00PM My husband and I watch NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.

I’m most struck by a story about twenty thousand National Guard officers who are asked to secure the inauguration, and photos of them sleeping on hard marble floors in the Capitol building. I wonder how this compares with the transfer of power from George W. Bush to Barack Obama.

It also reminds me of a podcast by Dan Carlin that I listened to in September, about why Carlin was going to vote Democratic for the first time since 1992. He pretty much laid out the scenario that actually ended up happening: that Donald Trump would say that the vote went against him, that it was not accurate. Carlin talked about how this would cause civil war and how dangerous Trump was. He called that already back in September. Just amazing.

Hung Nguyen

63 years old Virginia

Recorded Jan. 20, 2021

7:45AM I look at CNN.com on my iPhone for news updates. I note an article reporting that some Trump supporters think he’s about to declare martial law—and they’re excited.

First thing in the morning, this article is an eye-catcher. Today, we have an inauguration, and we still have people who don’t believe that Biden won. The events of January 6 already showed that, but even a few weeks later, there are still people believing that Trump is in charge, still believing in something that isn’t true. I’ve been more and more worried about this recently. There are many people out there who are not catching up to reality.

In general, I look at daily news online, on websites or Facebook, starting first thing in the morning. I like to know what’s going on; what’s happened in the US in the past twenty-four hours is of most interest to me. Often, I use Apple News. It puts together many different sources in one place. I click whatever headline is most interesting to me. Some sources require subscriptions, so I don’t read those. Some news sources I don’t recognize—Vox, I’ve never heard of them. Washington Post or CNN are more trustworthy to me, or Bloomberg, because I’ve heard of them and followed for a long time.

8:15AM I drive to work. On the way, I listen to an NPR news story about Trump’s departure from the White House. The story describes how Marine One circled over the Mall and US Capitol. What comes to my mind, hearing this, is that Trump is having a last look. I know how hard it is for him to admit that he lost the election. It is interesting to note that he still wants to look at DC one last time. Maybe he still doesn’t want to leave all this. Maybe he’ll be missing this place.

8:45AM At work, I turn on CNN.com to see Trump’s live send-off. I also see Biden’s convoy driving to a church service with congressional leaders. For work, I spend a whole day in front of a screen. It makes it easy to have the news on for big moments like today.

9:00AM On Facebook, I tune in to NVR Channel, a Vietnamese-speaking radio show, which makes comments about Trump’s legacy, the pardons he made, and the inauguration ceremony.

I emigrated from Vietnam. Recently, this channel has become one of my favorites. The sources they have are verifiable; they quote the AP or Reuters. The speakers are very seasoned. It’s live, and very convenient. Their mission is to bring recent news updates to a Vietnamese-speaking audience in the US and abroad. There are a huge number of Trump supporters in the Vietnamese community. This channel may work against that. My impression is that news channels in the Vietnamese community, on Facebook and YouTube, are more in support of Trump than not.

10:30AM I tune in to CNN live again for inauguration coverage. I keep an eye on it. Seeing all the former presidents except Trump walking in together… George Bush is smiling. Obama is smiling… this is really big for me. This is a sign of unity. It’s very significant, a tradition that has been happening for a long time.

11:45AM I stop to watch Biden being sworn in. I turn the captions on. This moment is very emotional for me. After all these problems that Biden has had to go through with Trump, this is the moment. It’s more emotional for me than previous inaugurations, because it’s really happening, after so much resistance.

12:15PM I see fragments of captioned speeches.

12:45PM I turn off CNN and switch to ABC to watch Pence depart in front of the US Capitol.

6:30PM Back at home, I watch ABC World News Tonight on the television, which mostly has coverage of the inauguration today. I jump around a lot between ABC, CNN, NBC. I trust them all pretty interchangeably, but not everybody reports the same thing. I’m trying to jump around to get as much as I can.

In general, I don’t have time for local news. Sometimes I’ll tune in to ABC a little early just to catch the weather. For the most part, what’s on ABC is the same as what I see online. But it’s a lot more complete and more interesting. Reading, you don’t get the action, the movement, the field reporters’ comments. I prefer that.

7:00PM I switch the television to NBC Nightly News. My wife and I watch ABC and NBC news pretty much every night. It’s dinnertime, and it’s convenient. They’ve been my most trustworthy news sources since the 1990s, maybe even the 1980s. When we started watching, we had a TV antenna. We never subscribed to cable. The point is, I’ve been watching this a long, long time. I don’t watch Fox News because I find them too cheesy.

9:00PM I watch the inauguration celebration hosted by Tom Hanks on network television while I Skype with a friend and talk about the inauguration. I turn down the volume and turn on the captions. The Skype is a celebration, a last-minute thing. Tom Hanks is a big name, of course. I catch a moment where Biden is talking in the Lincoln Memorial. The whole thing is so carefully put together, with songs. The picture is very crisp and clear. The color is great. The big moment is the fireworks. It’s a great thing to see. Between watching this and talking with my friend, it’s a great moment of celebration for us.

Daniel Sanders

42 years old Florida

Recorded Jan. 21, 2021

5:30AM I get up, consume a little caffeine, and sit for fifteen minutes while that kicks in. I shake the cobwebs out, then peruse the National Review app on my phone. I read an article that’s sort of a “Good riddance!” to President Trump called “Witless Ape Rides Helicopter.” The first line is “Well, that sucked.” It’s funny. The writer is Kevin Williamson—I like him. He’s one of the better writers in the country—that I’ve bumped into, at least.

I scroll Facebook and click on a Forbes article about how QAnon followers fell apart after the inauguration. I give it credence because what’s reported feels like a believable response for such desperate people. I eventually see other sources reporting the same thing. From the 2016 election on, I found myself obsessively diving into as many different perspectives as I could find. Somehow life turned into a real reality show, and I was obsessed. The day after the inauguration, though, finally, I’m no longer frantically scrolling through Facebook for the dopamine hit of the latest incendiary comments. I’m actually able to kick back. I’m curious to know if this is a honeymoon period.

7:45AM Most of my car time is dedicated to NPR or other types of podcasts. While driving this morning, I listen to a thirty-seven-minute talk with David Blight about “The Spirit of Democracy” from the New-York Historical Society. I saw a link for it on Facebook.

I don’t get as much news from Facebook as I did in the past. Friends would share these big splashy headlines, and then I would read the articles and they’d be nothing like what they seemed. So now I try to avoid that. My Facebook is a professional DJ page, not a personal one. It’s mostly people that I run into through DJing or people that follow me. As much as I would like to believe that my fans and followers are well-read and discerning people, history has pointed against that.

But I love things like this program. David Blight in particular has the kind of voice that I can listen to forever. He’s a history professor at Yale, and his course on the Civil War and Reconstruction is free. It’s astounding. He can tell a story like few other people I know.

9:45AM I read a few articles from The Dispatch, primarily about the new Biden administration and upcoming strategies and actions. I’m curious to see what things are getting done—what’s happening, as opposed to what’s being said. I spent the last four years really angry. I probably lost some of my ability to debate and think well. The Dispatch—at least the things that I’ve read—tends to be within reason.

I tend to like Jonah Goldberg and David French. The first time I encountered Jonah Goldberg was probably on Bill Maher. The things he had to say were reasonable. And when you can back things with the Constitution, okay, great—hard to argue with that. I try to find educated but generally less incendiary news sources. On the right, I’m looking at The Dispatch, David French, or his old colleagues at National Review. I also read stuff from the Times, The Nation, and more standard things.

11:00AM I tune in to C-SPAN on my internet browser to listen to some of the Buttigieg confirmation hearings. I liked Buttigieg back in the Democratic primaries. I thought he was the right kind of intelligent, and boring. That would be nice to have. And he’s smart. He never says anything wrong. Boring is good—I think we can use a breather.

12:45pm I read a story on my PBS NewsHour app about the Biden administration’s approach to COVID-19. I find it hard to believe that the Biden team is starting “from scratch” on vaccines, which I’m seeing pop up in a few places. Most hyperbole rings false to me.

I have a few news apps. I have one for the National Review. The New York Times. I’ve got PBS NewsHour and BBC. Al Jazeera. Obviously Apple News. I have AP. The Economist. Cyprus Mail, too—my wife is Cypriot, and we were close to moving to Cyprus a

few years ago. We’re still considering retiring there someday, and I find it interesting to follow what’s happening.

2:00PM I listen to the Washington Post’s Presidential podcast on my Apple Podcasts app. For an hour and forty-five minutes, I listen to the episodes on presidents James K. Polk through Abraham Lincoln.

The present is nothing new. This gives me perspective. Politics, and the divisiveness of the media—especially around Lincoln, the antebellum period, and through Reconstruction, my gosh, some of the most racist, horrendous stuff that our nation’s gone through—it’s as heated now as it was then. Maybe even a little less now. The ubiquitousness of information now, I think, is probably the problem.

We’ve gotten away from the classical model of education. People haven’t learned to discern what is good information and what is not; they don’t have that ability. I get in arguments with people all the time about why we need to learn trigonometry, how high school should teach more than balancing a checkbook and how to make a bed. You need trigonometry, you need philosophy, because they teach you how to solve problems. They teach you how to evaluate data. You need history; you need to be able to write a research paper so you can look at something and say, Okay, well, Wikipedia is probably not the way to go.

The first thing I learned in English composition is that everything has a bias. Absolutely everything. Even news that’s written by an algorithm. But some biases are less hidden than others. Things that use hot words, these days, like “destroy,” “eviscerate”—I don’t even give stuff like that the time of day.

Sumari Barnes

25 years old California

Recorded Feb. 9, 2021

6:30AM I check today’s stocks on the TD Ameritrade app around the time the market opens. I scroll below my own portfolio to see if any business news catches my eye. I don’t wake up for the stock market, but I try to check up on it every morning. It’s one part of my morning routine. My partner works in finance, and from dating him, I’ve gotten a lot more into it.

I Google ENZC, a penny stock that I purchased. It’s a short-term investment. I saw someone tweet about a week ago that it was rising, like twenty cents or something. I asked my partner about it, and he said that you can make good money on penny stocks, but it’s like gambling. One day the stock will be, like, seventy cents, and then it could drop down to twenty. So it’s important to check it every single day—I need to know when to get out. From Google, I choose one of the first articles I see, which is from Yahoo Finance. I trust stock news as long as there’s an established news source. I’ll look for comments, what people are saying about the stocks, to compare what people are saying with what professionals are saying.

I check my email and see a story from Travel Noire about the man behind the first Black-owned online Korean language school. I subscribe to Travel Noire’s newsletter, and I get emails at least daily. I don’t open their emails every day, but as a Black person that has traveled to South Korea, the headline caught my eye. That’s pretty much how I navigate those emails. If something pops up that’s interesting to me, I’ll read it.

I really only consume my own personal media early in the mornings, and I am primarily concerned about my stocks. Almost all of my other news comes from my partner, who is a news junkie and has to stay informed for work. I don’t consume much news myself, which is partially intentional. I’d consider myself relatively informed, but news is often very sad. Sometimes, I believe, ignorance is bliss.

If something comes up during the day, my partner

will screenshot it and send it to me. He generally will text me what he just learned, and I trust him as a news source. Sometimes, I’ll Google it so I can read more in detail. I started screenshotting and sending him stuff, too, if anything rolls around me, but he’s more of “the real news”—CNBC, Fox, CNN—and I’m more pop culture. As far as watching the news on television, he taught me to watch all of the stations, because the media can misconstrue stories to get you to believe their narrative. I never watched Fox News before this, except when one of the families I nannied for in college watched it and I judged them for it. Watching Fox was particularly interesting during the presidential election—I’d flip between CNN, CNBC, and Fox; they were all commenting on the same debates and had completely different understandings of what they watched.

1:45PM I haven’t been able to find podcasts I like to listen to while driving, so I text my friend and ask him to send me recommendations. He recommends Joe Budden and a podcast called The Brilliant Idiots, two podcasts that primarily cover pop culture. I listen to the Brilliant Idiots episode “Port of Miami,” because I am not a big fan of Joe Budden, although he is podcast royalty. I knew of him when he was a rapper. I heard that he had punched his girlfriend’s teeth out or something—he was a terrible guy, abusive—so when I found out he was on the rise as an influencer, I was pretty disgusted. With the few things I know about him, the fact that so many men truly believe in him and follow him is weird to me.

I used to follow the Shade Room, but I found it to be negative. Today, I’m pretty busy, so I’m not scrolling as much as I usually would. I also follow something called Remixd Magazine, which talks about new artists and things going on in their life, whether it’s a new album or just a nice picture they recently posted. It’s a pretty small publication, but the founder went to school with me. It began during COVID and had a pretty fast rise.

2:15PM I listen to the Snacks Daily podcast from Robinhood, the financial services company. Apparently Hershey has done a great job at target-marketing s’mores in areas that have more strict lockdowns, because it is something families can do outside together, and they’ve seen great revenue increase because of it. I also learn that Tesla transferred $1.5 billion into Bitcoin and it gave the currency a lot more validity. Interesting.

4:30PM I arrive at my partner’s house and join him in watching CNBC. He watches it pretty much throughout the day, and I am there at least two days a week. So I would say I watch CNBC frequently now but don’t have much choice. Today, it’s mostly updates on the coronavirus. They also report that Kobe Bryant’s crash investigation has been closed, and the pilot is definitively responsible. The crash was due to foggy weather. I thought Kobe Bryant’s case had already been closed, and I thought it was quite evident it was the company’s fault.

They also report that COVID most likely did not come from a lab in Wuhan, China. It may have come from an animal, but they are still researching. I feel like there have been so many different stories on where it came from that I’ll never believe anything. I also don’t care where it came from at this point; I only want to hear about the solution.

When I was in school, I was a journalism minor, and I was also studying political science. It was much more natural to stay up to date with everything. But as I’ve gotten older, the news isn’t really telling good news. I don’t go out of my way to watch the nightly news, because it’s almost always bad. I live in Oakland, and it’s like, “This person just died from COVID, this person got shot over here.” I know it’s important to be aware and informed about what’s going on around you, but I just can’t deal with so much negativity. I know what’s going on, so I’ll just let it be, and the major stuff I get through social media. I don’t need to sit there and indulge every day, because it just kind of takes over your mental state sometimes. cjr

Chapter 5: Why Bother?

Carrying on in the face of uncertainty

Report all the news you want. The reality of our media ecosystem is such that any story—no matter how consequential and well-vetted—is liable to come up against suspicion, or outright dismissal. Trust in the press is at an all-time low, which means that journalists must grapple with frustrations of purpose. How can we move forward amid all that undermines journalism, from the attacks by elected officials to the misinformation that clogs social media? How do we work through an atmosphere of profound skepticism about the nature of truth itself? And how can we be so sure that we know what the truth is? —The editors