https://spectator.org/trump-hating-journalists-write-fiction-not-news/
Hardly any journalists get scoops anymore because almost everybody already knows everything. A couple of afternoons ago, in the fruit shop, the lady who has worked there for as long as I can remember greeted me with arched eyebrows and arms locked in pre-election campaign position: “So you’re the one who writes all these fascist articles?” My answer was almost as stupid as her question: “Give me six ripe tomatoes too, if you please.” Information travels faster than my reflexes. And I’m starting to get used to the idea of journalists storming into newsrooms, sweating, bursting with some big exclusive, only to sit down, start writing it up, and discover, crushed, that someone has already been dancing to it for three days on TikToc.
The era of the journalism we saw in The Front Page has passed. Walter Burns was a scoundrel, but at least he did it to sell newspapers. These days, the most exciting thing that comes out of any of those old newspaper offices is the tweet of an intern who has published some personal obscenity by mistake on the newspaper’s Twitter feed. And the worst thing is that most of the followers won’t notice the difference. Without a doubt, authorial and analytical journalism is an honorable and pertinent way out of the eternal crisis that long ago left our business looking like Wile E. Coyote, right after the stick of dynamite went off in his face.
Unfortunately, not all the press has chosen to find an honorable way out. I’ve discovered these days, with certain surprise, that fiction-journalism is back, although in a much more tedious version. No, it is not the gonzo journalism of the great Hunter S. Thompson. For that you need talent. No, this is prophetical news. We didn’t see that coming. I would never have imagined that this prolonged crisis of journalism would lead to the horoscopes jumping out of the back pages onto the very front page. The new section chiefs will be witches!
