Thanks for the article, I always enjoy this column. That said, maybe it's speaking to a very specific (big) US newsroom problem, but is it essentially saying that the a) national bad mood in the US (pandemic, inflation, your wobbly democracy, foreign policy) is connected to b) the mood inside media companies, which because of this morale issue can't do their work? How exactly is the national bad mood making the job harder to do?
Thanks for reading. A few thoughts: 1) My strong sense is that this phenomenon is occurring in smaller as well as larger newsrooms; I admit I don't know about outside the US. 2) The way it makes the work harder, to be both succinct and and a bit simplistic, is by diverting energy and time away from thinking about how to serve readers to thinking about the concerns of staff.
Aha, ok. By concerns, do you mean how social and political forces are affecting them - and that their economic/political horizon is different to the extent that they're unable to serve readers? Sorry for the avalanche - it's a very interesting problem, so I'm trying to understand it from a different context.
Not exactly. I think it's more nearly everyone's reaction to what has been a very hard time, and the difficulty people are having in pivoting from that. Hope that helps.
Thanks for the article, I always enjoy this column. That said, maybe it's speaking to a very specific (big) US newsroom problem, but is it essentially saying that the a) national bad mood in the US (pandemic, inflation, your wobbly democracy, foreign policy) is connected to b) the mood inside media companies, which because of this morale issue can't do their work? How exactly is the national bad mood making the job harder to do?
Thanks for reading. A few thoughts: 1) My strong sense is that this phenomenon is occurring in smaller as well as larger newsrooms; I admit I don't know about outside the US. 2) The way it makes the work harder, to be both succinct and and a bit simplistic, is by diverting energy and time away from thinking about how to serve readers to thinking about the concerns of staff.
Aha, ok. By concerns, do you mean how social and political forces are affecting them - and that their economic/political horizon is different to the extent that they're unable to serve readers? Sorry for the avalanche - it's a very interesting problem, so I'm trying to understand it from a different context.
Not exactly. I think it's more nearly everyone's reaction to what has been a very hard time, and the difficulty people are having in pivoting from that. Hope that helps.