The New Journalism

I’ve wanted to have a weekly column since I was in my late teens. Now, of course, anyone can have one.

Your own free blog through, ahem, WordPress. A self-written Substack of your own fact-based or fictional stuff with a minimum paywall. Or an ongoing spot on an existing website which you contribute to for nothing or for which you are very, very, VERY seriously underpaid.

I’m not sure if a continuing stream of your own TikTok videos or Instagram posts counts as your own column but in the world of 21^st century “journalism” I suppose it has to. I don’t say this as begrudgingly as it sounds because I occasionally watch them and find some of them amusing. But, yikes, there is sooooooooooo much stream of consciousness stuff by nitwits or morons or fringe characters looking to insight anger, an argument or a riot by any rational human being.

Much like our current POTUS.

Except he does it live from the White House and it gets picked up by not only every social media platform, but all the major networks and newspaper outlets. It might not cost us money to watch them, but rest assured we pay.

As his exorbitant tariff plan for pretty much every country went into effect last week (Note: 25-125% for foreign goods, which is pretty much most of everything the way manufacturing works in the modern era), he caused the stock market to crash by almost 20% (Note: Dropping our worth by $6 trillion), only to then bounce back to three-quarters its worth, and then go back down again – only to partially recover once more – but not before it shook up the bond market.

No, I didn’t know what that meant either. Though after some basic reading (Note: Imagine that!) I learned it meant that big world investors, who often dump their excess money in things like the sure thing treasury bonds of the United States for safe keeping, were spooked. Meaning the international financial world no longer sees the U.S. as stable – aka a sure bet for almost a century – which in turn means any real faith the rest of the world economy has in us as a reliable “safe place” in the future is cratering. Fast.

The Great Orange One vamped that this was all his plan all along to the TV cameras and in front of preening White House aides and hand-picked members of the press, and that he only modified because a few naysayers began to get “yippy.”

Yippy? #CallingDrMarty

Even though when he announced the deal he said he’d never modify it.

Of course, we have all of this on tape from a few days ago but that was forgotten as quickly as yesterday’s Truth Social post and replaced with talk about being “nimble.” And, in the next few days, by messaging from his minions, who kept repeating “the art of the deal, the art of the deal,” “the art of the deal.”

The messaging was supposed to bolster his expertise on dealmaking by using the 1980s bestseller he supposedly authored. But everyone except his voters seem to know journalist Tony Schwartz famously wrote The Art of the Deal AND coined the phrase, figuring out a way to package the Orange One’s tangents into something vaguely coherent. Not only did Trump never pen a word of it but Schwartz has publicly stated numerous times that he isn’t to this day convinced that he’s ever read it.

Speaking of reliving the past, the Oval Office talk continued for what seemed like forever with a series of softball questions and rambling word salad answers where he went on to wax nostalgic on his first presidency, claiming the stock market was at an all-time high when he left in 2020 and the country was in the best shape it’s ever been.

Except, well, I was there and so were you.

And I don’t know about you, but my 401K was way, way, waaaay down, and the country was still reeling and masked (Note: Okay, we in the blue states were) from Covid.

Again, I know because I was there and so were you….

Thousands of people were dead in its wake, many more businesses were bankrupted and Trump himself came close to death, likely due to his refusal to wear a mask. And then the uniquely-rare treatment he was given of monoclonal antibodies. (Note: The treatment was approved for him by Dr. Peter Stein, the director of New Drugs at the FDA, who the DOGE bros just fired).

Yes, Covid happened. This isn’t a senior citizen golf tournament where you ask for and receive a gimme because you own the course.

And yes, I’m a partisan, but facts, real facts, don’t lie.

The only time facts lie are when they are alternative facts.

In other words, lies.

Lies go unchallenged in the zeitgeist these days because there is little real journalism that is read by a majority of voters in the country. Sure, there is lots to be read, and watched, and listened to. But it’s become niche. Networks for niche political points of view. Some real newspapers but they were years ago branded as “fake news” by the Orange One and, in turn, by MAGA voters.

So mostly it’s HIS word. And, if rating numbers and polls of MAGA voters are to believed, it’s far, far right (Note: Formerly fringe) podcasts and blogs and social media posts. Many non-factual and often written by conspiracy theorists like Laura Loomer, a 9/11 truther who now advises and travels with the president and recently recommended the firing of several key and accomplished members of his National Security Council because of disloyalties she imagines in her mind.

Let’s not even get started with the guy who runs the Health and Human Services Department that finds vaccines suspect. After two young children died of measles in Texas, he went on Fox News and touted medically unproven alternate treatments by two doctors he called “extraordinary healers” , one of whom was seen on a news report in his own Texas clinic treating a child when he himself was recovering from full blown measles, acknowledging the remaining measles spots on his head to an offscreen reporter, and confessing he was “achy” yesterday but today was just a bit tired.

Now I take vitamins and believe in free speech as much as the next American – and these days likely more so. But with our niche media landscape, when anyone can be widely read or widely seen, we are in the midst of a real catastrophe. See, here’s the real problem for me:

I grew up reading people like Jimmy Breslin, Nora Ephron and Fran Lebowitz in publications like the Daily News, New York Magazine and Andy Warhol’s Interview and there was a personal nature to their writing that hooked me. Breslin covered politics and related human interest stories. Ephron talked about social issues, entertainment, food and behind-the-scenes power struggles. Fran Lebowitz would mostly give humorously snide opinions on pretty much anything and anyone.

They were all columnists but they all also wrote best-selling books that were considered a type of new journalism that was opinion-based but, at its root, relied on F.A.C.T.S.

Love them or hate them these were learned people. I don’t even mean they were all college graduates. I mean they were smart and savvy and thoughtful. Meaning they did research, spoke to people, observed all kinds of things, gathered facts from all corners and then filtered it all through their own point of view. It might have been opinion but it was informed opinion. Not made up sh-t looking for a result.

I loved the 1970s – the writing, the singer-songwriters (Note: Long live Carole King, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, Cat Stevens and all the people I’m leaving out), even the fashion (Note: I soo miss my platforms shoes!).

But it wasn’t all great. Far from it.

In the first half we had Richard Nixon and his group of corrupt clowns lying and cheating their way through the White House. When he was running for the presidency, Nixon went behind the scenes and derailed a pending peace deal in Vietnam brokered by a Democratic president, promising them they’d soon get something better from him if they backed off since he was likely to soon get elected to the presidency (Note: The latter especially if they backed off and didn’t give the Democrats a deal. Which they did.)

This cost the lives of thousands of young American men, not to mention national and international respect once the facts of the Watergate break-in and the various lies told to protect him, and by him, finally surfaced.

And they only surfaced because the independently owned Washington Post – and two reporters they employed named Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein – doggedly reported on the corruption for years, with the stoic solid backing of the place that published the vetted, fact-based stories – at the time deemed treasonous by the far right – they were writing.

Amazon’s billionaire Jeff Bezos now owns The Washington Post. He might still be reporting news but after meeting with Trump and publicly contributing $1,000,000 to his inauguration fund, he’s not looking for the next Woodward and Bernstein. Meaning what? He soft caters to him, already changing his plaything’s, I mean paper’s, editorial page to reflect a “healthy diversity of opinion and argument” that precipitated the loss of many of its most prestigious lead editors and columnists who value the latter more than anything. Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Instagram and Facebook, made a similar contribution and analogous pronouncements – e.g. ending “fact-checking” – that reflects the same point of view. We won’t even discuss the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, it’s conversion to “X” and his conversion to a chain-saw wielding, Nazi saluting cheesehead.

I could go on.

But suffice it to say, none of them have any interest in Breslin, Ephron, Lebowitz or anyone else of their ilk or pedigree.

What they seem preoccupied with is personal power and prosperity through any means necessary. The freedom to do what they want, when they want and to whomever they want. Unchecked and untethered.

Much like everyone else who continues to turn away from the obvious facts that are unfolding in our nation’s Capital right before our eyes.

Not to mention the man behind the MAGA curtain who’s supposedly running the whole show.

But please, pay no real attention to him.

Bob Dylan – “Blowin’ in the Wind”

01.12.25

by notesfromachair

City on Fire

January 11, 2025

Greetings from fiery Los Angeles.

I am one of many thousands of people who had to evacuate their home with little notice and in mere minutes. To say it was shocking surreal, horrendous and many other adjectives I can’t think of at the moment, and probably wouldn’t do it justice at all, does not tell even a fraction of the story.

But I am also one of the lucky ones who survived, and whose home and immediate neighborhood stands pretty much untouched in comparison to what’s left of the Mad Max terrain in the former gorgeous towns of Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Altadena and others.

Thanks to the L.A. Fire Department, the response of local officials and the fact that the winds had died down enough for it to be tackled by air, the massive flames in the hills of Hollywood, aka the Sunset Fire, were contained relatively quickly. Though if you lost your home, or someone close to you, this doesn’t mean very much at all.

Over four decades, I have grown to love Los Angeles as much as my hometown of New York City and that’s really saying something. I can’t really tell you exactly why other than to say L.A. is part of California and that people have been coming to California for years for the freedom to be who they are and live the way they choose. It’s a mirage of sorts but not fully. There is something about the vastness of the state and what has become its melting pot of a population during the many years I’ve been here that has more and more made that mirage a bit more real. I mean, you might not get what you want but you have a ton of space to do it in and a vast number of tribes you can sample if you’re looking for a place where you can truly belong.

Also, if you don’t like it you can always leave. Literally no one will judge you for it. Out here most of us eventually learn that it’s up to an individual to make themselves happy. California won’t do it and especially L.A. won’t make it happen for you. You have to figure out how to make it happen.

This is one of the many reasons these L.A. fires have been so devastating for me. Watching it happen is like watching the beauty of all those dreams and all that stunning space get fried to a crisp in real time right before your eyes. Everything is ephemeral but the breadth and randomness of such mass destruction feels unusually, and most particularly, cruel.

Which does not mean we don’t feel that and more for all kinds of cruel destruction. No one has the market cornered on those type of regrettable feelings. In fact, maybe if there were more recognition of the latter, the world wouldn’t feel like the hateful place it all too often does these days.

Still, watching firefighters from neighboring states and countries flying in to help the people of L.A. has been quite something. Not to mention how quickly the American Red Cross, World Central Kitchen and dozens of other organizations and volunteers have opened outlets, service areas and phone lines to help us begin to cope and, eventually, recover.

But here is what is NOT helpful. Playing the Blame Game.

I get the country is divided and L.A. is an easy and often willing target (Note: Yes, we’re in on the joke. Duh). But you’d think an estimated $50 billion in damages from the largest city in a state that sends more money than any other to the federal government, would be enough to satiate the naysayers at this point.

Because I don’t trust myself to 1. Explain this properly and 2. Not go on a tangential, unhelpful and hysterical tirade in this sensitive moment, I want to instead share a very wise social media post from my friend Michael Colleary. This weekend he very smartly and very succinctly explained what happened in L.A. in an effort to offer some truth and reality to friends, family and acquaintances from out of state who have been hearing and reading all kinds of things. It goes as follows:

Dear FB Friends – I have received many messages and emails particularly from friends and family on the East Coast, asking after our safety. A million thanks for your care and concern. I would like to answer a few questions I have been asked repeatedly, particularly about fire hydrants and firefighting crews and LA’s overall response to the fires.

Let me try to provide a little perspective for those of you back East …

The Palisades fire began as a wilderness brush fire at 10:30AM on January 7th.

Driven by 80 MPH winds – hurricane-fast winds – within 24 hours it had burned 12,000 acres and hundreds of structures.

Any chance of LA fire crews – the best trained and most experienced in the world – containing it, let alone extinguishing it, drop to zero because air tankers and water-hauling helicopters can’t fly in 80mph winds.

So, to recap: 24 hours, 12,000 acres burned.

For my New York friends: Central Park is 850 acres. So, imagine a firestorm that incinerates 14 Central Parks in 24 hours. Or more to the point perhaps, imagine a firestorm that blows through Central Park, incinerating every blade of grass FOURTEEN TIMES in 24 hours.

For my NJ friends: our hometown of Montclair gets off a little better. At 4,000 acres, it would have been reduced to ash only THREE times in 24 hours. Imagine every single resident of Montclair becoming homeless on one night. Imagine the violent energy required for that to happen. Because it did, 3 times over.

And Palisades is only one of the massive fires burning here. The Eaton fire has burned 14,000 acres on the eastern edge of LA.

And it’s still going. As of this minute, the Palisades fire is closing in on 40,000 acres. That’s bigger than San Francisco (thankfully most of it is – for the moment – in remote canyons teeming with scrub foliage; yes, LA is that huge).

As shocking and overwhelming and devastating as this has been for so many thousands and thousands of people – my sister and brother-in-law lost their home; his niece and nephew both lost homes in separate fire areas – it is excruciating to hear these endless lies and blaming and gibberish about how DEI and budget cuts somehow caused or contributed to this absolute apocalyptic disaster.

No city, no county, no state, no country on the planet would or could be prepared and equipped to confront what’s happened here.

Because what has happened here is much closer to a volcanic eruption than a “brush fire.”

Our neighborhood is now within sight of the Palisades fire which overnight spread to Brentwood. Shan is packing her clothes. I have to go inside now and get my mother – already evacuated once with just the clothes on her back – up and ready to go should we be ordered to leave.

Friends, I know there’s not much you can do from far away – aside from donate to the Red Cross, etc.

But I humbly ask that – if you hear someone spreading the all-too prevalent lies being spewed for political score-settling – tell that person – from me – to STFU. Because they have no idea what’s really happening here.