My fugue state called News
the morning paper
harbinger of good and ill
- – I step over it- Dave McCroskey
That little gem of haiku has pretty much summed up my feeling of general news overload. When I’m sitting at the local coffeehouse/bakery and the average Joe or Jane talks to me about the news or some news they have heard, I’m all attentiveness personified. But when I see it on the television or read it in newspapers, I go into a fugue state. I feel like I’ve lost myself and my individuality. I’ve become a grain of sand just being carried away by la máquina de las noticias (“the news machine” for those of you not fluent in Spanish; thank you Rosetta Stone).
But I don’t enter a fugue state when I read blogs for news. Maybe because it seems like the coffeehouse/bakery. Regular folks (for the most part) chiming in with their thought instead of la máquina de las noticias blasting it at me. Local newspapers did have that personal, next door neighbor feel. But these days, they are weighted with Associated Press, Reuters, etc (what happened to the names of the writers; they are starting to disappear). Guess this is future journalism.
In being a journeyman futurist, I often laud the advances as THE WAY AND ONLY WAY and applaud them heartily. There is always room for improvement in many aspects of our lives. But has our current corporate news state improved the news or has it just improved the money to be made off of news at the expense of news?
2 Responses to “My fugue state called News”
When it comes to news, the phrase ‘last throes’ seems like the only apt one.
While some look to the blogoshpere to save the day, I’m a pessimist. Were it to garmer enough income to do its own investigative reporting, for example, it would get caught up in the same old corporate profits net.
Here’s some news for you. Once again the “minority” of radical islam has flipped its lid.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/theblasphemousteddybear;_ylt=AuTEux.YDWu.Pam_CgF2so.s0NUE