Comments on: Old news

By: marlyat2

marlyat2 — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:58:23 +0000

You sound like Thoreau here. I’m sure you know what he says about people senselessly running after news and how we encounter one another too often for genuine encounters.

(As for the other item, I will write you on Tuesday!)

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 15:36:59 +0000

True. I have slowed down on the blogging, but in part I think that’s simply because I’m getting tired of my own words. I do still enjoy reading other people’s blogs, and I think the key is to pick and choose the posts one wants to read, and not end up skimming everything out of some warped sense of duty.

By: butuki

butuki — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 08:02:47 +0000

I think our brains are not hardwired to process news as it comes. Our reflexes just aren’t fast enough to evaluate the information. Perhaps a fly or a hummingbird might do a lot better with new news.

Strangely I feel similarly about blogs. Once I started slowing down with them and not spending all my time reading them or writing in mine every day, I began to appreciate the more thoughtful writing, words that still remain with me even after a lot of time has passed. After all, like you do every day, it is the real-time appreciation of the world that I am after, not the writing and reading about it. If you don’t actually live what you profess to be writing for, then what is the point of writing?

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 01:33:25 +0000

Thanks for all the thoughtful reactions, y’all. I’m glad to find myself in such good company.

arby – Thanks for stopping by. I’m not sure that dispassionate is necessarily better, though — some things it’s good to get impassioned about. And I still do, I guess, though perhaps with less intensity than I used to.

rr – Yes, and I think it was the memory of a particularly pungent screed of yours against our obsession with instantaneousness that emboldened me to write this post.

Jarrett – I love your phrase, “the false erotics of every daily rise and fall”! Damn.

Bill – If you must.

David – Yes, but I don’t see how it could be otherwise. All journalism is advocacy journalism of a sort, even if the causes are not expressly articulated. The ideology of growth, for example, is nearly all-pervasive, even in the most apparently unbiased media. One has to read any news source critically.

Pica – Well, I probably would read more news online, but the paper is there and convenient. I don’t have a laptop to bring to the table with me when I eat.

Keith – I am aware that Brittney is in some sort of custody battle, though I couldn’t have told you her ex’s name. Hope that isn’t too disillusioning.

Sometimes the fluff stories are fun, though. I really got a kick out of the Joe Paterno road rage story when my dad told me about it last night.

dale – I never know whether to be afraid or to be reassured when you and I are on the same page! The risk of contamination from those “familiar narratives” is precisely why I can’t handle much if any news first thing in the morning, when I’m trying to germinate something creative.

By: dale

dale — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:42:07 +0000

I’ve had a post on the back burner for years (never posted because it has an obstinately snobby tone) about “how to be well-read,” its second piece of advice is to consume no daily journalism. (The first piece, of course, is to watch no television.) Events of today or yesterday are almost never well understood, & certainly not by people who have a gift for improvising stories under time-pressure. That facility in taking brand-new facts and making them fit into familiar narratives is more a curse than a blessing, I think.

By: Keith

Keith — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:48:17 +0000

IMHO you are better informed reading old news than a majority of Americans. Most of the kids I work with are only concerned with the tabloids and gossip columns. And I know many of them vote. So, who is a better parent, Kevin or Brittney? I need to know.

And I hope you have to look that story up Dave?

How I envy you some days.

By: Pica

Pica — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:31:18 +0000

I used to get the Guardian Weekly for this very reason; it’s a healthier approach, not one I follow now (I get most news online). Good for you, Dave.

By: David Harmon

David Harmon — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:11:54 +0000

Yeah, I gave up on most newspapers years ago. If something’s important, at least one of the blogs I follow, or a RL friend, will mention it, and then I can look up the stories on the Web. Not to mention that these days, the papers are dominated by disinformation and propaganda! (Yes, they want you to be scared.)

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:57:38 +0000

Change “pointless” to “pointed”?

By: Jarrett

Jarrett — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:45:53 +0000

Any news that matters is still current weeks or even months later. Your approach steers you away from the false erotics of every daily rise and fall, and into the slower but stronger current of real history.