Fasten your seatbelts...
It's going to be a bumpy few weeks, to paraphrase that famous quote from "All About Eve."
Yeah, I'm really dreading the next few weeks. The potential for clusterf$#%ery is just off the charts. Spent the weekend just recharging to get myself through this next week.
Nationally, I've heard of one area (at least) running out of hospital beds. I just now saw that one major city ran out of ambulances (not verified). Medical staff are just quitting.
Schools are starting back up across the nation. There's already reports of schools having to close due to the delta variant (not in my neck of the woods but other states). Most schools around here aren't opened yet, or just very recently opened. Just bracing myself. This delta variant is not the same virus we faced last year.
California, again, is dealing with massive wildfires. I suspect in my lifetime the whole Pacific coast will be largely unlivable.
Haiti just had another massive earthquake, reminiscent of the one 11 years ago. Last headline I saw earlier this evening is the death toll is already at more than 1,000, and counting.
Did make progress in a presentation I'll be making in a couple weeks on journalism, its history and the importance of local news. Have my speech drafted out, a good bibliography started, just have to design the pamphlet on how to send news. I've done that before so, as long as I can get one of the programs in Google Docs to cooperate that shouldn't take too long. I do wonder if this will still happen- the presentation, that is - with COVID-19 cases soaring again. Oh well, even if it doesn't I have something put together for when I am asked.
One items I'm trying to check off my box is get one or two more good journalism books read. Did that this weekend (part of the reason for my blog post).
19. Informing the News, by Thomas E. Patterson. This was both an excellent and insightful read- and extremely depressing. The author outlines where covering the news went wrong, why, and some possible myths behind what audiences are looking for (although I do wonder if parts of that research would hold today, this was published in 2013). I've realized myself, as a working journalist, that more specialists in various topics are needed, even before reading this. Patterson puts it in better terms than I could articulate. One phrase that stuck with me is that we are at a unique disadvantage in that our profession relies so heavily on other professionals to get information to write about- but without always fully understanding the situation. At best this can lead to vital topics being oversimplified. At worst, it could lead to scenarios where professionals with an agenda could outright lie, and we don't know enough to catch on to that until it's too late. I don't disagree, Patterson is right. However, is this realistic? Maybe in the 2010s, when this was being compiled. Maybe. But now? The hard reality is if you want journalists with true expertise in a field (medicine, science, and math are three that immediately spring to mind), you need to start paying at least double, and possibly triple, what journalists are being paid now. I realize not having expertise is costly, but smaller, news outlets don't have the budgets, and the larger corporately owned news industries don't have the interest (quite the contrary, but that's another topic for another day). Parts of this were a needed gut check, personally, but it made me think of my job and how I might improve. That's a good thing. What I really like is the list of journalism resources towards the back. Also, Patterson focuses on journalism in general, but especially newspapers and television. So yes, this is a worthwhile read, no doubt. But it's not an easy read, especially for those who care about the field.
Currently reading: Democracy Without Journalism? by Victor Pickard, and A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman.