Jim Romanesko, the Poynter blogger assigned to sit in the control tower as the planes go down all over the airspace, talked today about how The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are in trouble: big trouble.
Romanesko's blog also points us to Roger Simon's observation in Columbia Journalism Review (from a look-back at the McCain camp's bullying of the press) that most Americans are already so mad at the press that beating up on them only increases sympathy for them. Made McCain look like a Steelers tackler kicking a poodle. (Or Kurt Warner.)
Then we have ABC News (owned by Disney, remember) denying that a talk-show format program is bumping Nightline out of its spot in the batting order.
So who cares about news anymore? The people who need it.
And they'll get it, too. Even if they have to pay more. There's a scene in "The Count of Monte Cristo" where the count, seated at breakfast with the young man he'll later learn is his son, tells the boy that he pays well to find out what's happening in every city he visits or has interests. That's fiction imitating life. It was true in Alexander Dumas' day. It was true when our nation was founded, it was true when the newspaper barons built palaces to honor themselves — places like Hearst Castle and Tribune Tower — and it's still true today.
Maybe the notion of daily news for the masses has become a questionable commodity. But we need to take a step back. It's not the news that people don't like. It's how that news comes to them. So some don't like the wood-pulp folded thing in the plastic bag in their driveway. They still want to know if it's going to rain tomorrow and what happened at the Santa Monica Airport where there was all that smoke yesterday. And they want details. Lots of details — like if anyone's hurt or dead. The amateur pilots want to know enough detail that they can stir their coffee with it at Starbucks (if the one down their street is still open. And if it's closed, they want to know why, and if the one by their brother's house is closing soon.)
I don't want to be flip about this. The shifting of land under our feet is scary. I sat through a magnitude 4.5 quake last month and I know.
But I know what a lot of journalism educators do. It's the young people. The cigar-chompers in Chicago who are covening to talk about saving that city's journalism are making a big mistake. They forgot to invite anybody under 30 to sit at the table in front of microphones.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Reality can smell bad
Homelessness got on board the train this week.
The Metrolink system in California is a culture unto itself. It's a world of people in suits and business casual with older women or twenty-somethings dabbing makeup, teens with plugged ears punching music players, men thumbing PDAs or tapping laptops. A few talk loudly on blue-tooth devices making business deals so the world can hear — though they get looks from those around them. Metrolink can be loud, but not that loud. Ages range from about 16 to 70. You don't often see young children or infants, and you rarely see people old enough that they can't easily navigate steps. Strollers are rare. Metrolink is supposed to be disability-accessible, but the practical reality is that it's a fast ride for people who move fast. There are exceptions, and when they're aboard, they're noticed — a kind of spectacle for the group to observe.
Some read the paper (really). Others sleep, but in a kind of dignified way. It's a controlled world. You don't mess with the system — not for long. Kids who climb aboard with no ticket get citations from the conductor or one of the many L.A. County Sheriff's Deputies who patrol the train. Ticket-less kids get found out because, well, they just stick out. You know them. When people in downtown L.A. board Metrolink (thinking it's Amtrak), they're spotted right away, too. It's the big luggage (though a few luggage-toting people do take Metrolink to get home from an Amtrak stop in L.A.) People who don't speak English — regardless the cultural background — become a problem, too on the morning Metrolink routes, unless they're bilingual.
This week, about halfway between the Riverside downtown station and L.A. Union station, a woman boarded in a dark hooded sweatshirt and grayish pants. Her face was wrinkled and dry, her shoulder-length hair matted and stringy. Her feet, in worn-looking sandals, were leathery. She looked tired. And she reeked of dried urine — a stench so strong it had the sting of ammonia in it. She carried a small reddish plastic grocery bag with various items, including a black velvety thing with pinkish tassels. Was she homeless? She fit the stereotype. And train riding is all about sizing people up — fast. It helps you know where to sit, or not sit. Once in a seat, your knees are inches from the person across from you. Depending on the girth of the person next to you, it can get cozy — in a bad way. Respiratory illness spreads fast on Metrolink.
The sweat-shirted woman dropped into the aisle seat across from me and within minutes the woman directly across from me rose and trudged upstairs. The man seated across and to the left of me was reading the paper and, as if waking, asked under his breath, "What's that smell?" He looked over at the woman, who had now moved over to the window and was huddled against it, trying to sleep or already out. She looked now like a rumpled pile of laundry. "What's her problem?" he asked me. I didn't answer. The man looked at a woman seated across from the sweat-shirted woman and, with his eyes and by mouthing the words, offered the seat across from me. She rose and moved over and the two gave each other knowing looks and shook their heads.
If the sweat-shirted woman was homeless, and even if she wasn't, there was something about her that was a confrontation of this commuter cultural system. Just by showing up, she was reminding these routine-minded people that there was a larger, very-hard world outside this narrow metal car rolling down predictable steel tracks. This was a woman who — by choice or by circumstances forced on her — was living proof that the world can be unbearable. She was hard to look at, hard to be near, maybe harder to understand.
I noticed that nobody confronted her — not even the conductor, who walked by and sized her up without pausing in his gait. He could have asked for tickets. I'd seen him do so in other circumstances, carding the whole train car to nab someone he suspected was a freeloader.
But nobody tried to help her, either. That's also a rule of commuter life. Those who don't fit the system get left out.
Metrolink is a place where the lives of desperate people get hidden under a veneer of disciplined control. You punch your ticket, you board the train on time, you get off where you're supposed to. But underneath is often the pain of an abusive spouse, kids in trouble, a court system that tramples, a boss that demeans, an economy that sucks the life out of a woman or man. It can produce a kind of silent scream that can be seen in the eyes, in the tone of voice, in the very gait.
But when these board the train with their stooped weariness, if they are part of the accepted commuter cultures, there is a degree of comfort — laughter and a kind of solace, albeit mixed with pain, in these cloth-covered seats of the Metrolink cars. There are card games, there's nut bread or chocolates handed out at holiday times. It's all a kind of coping.
But this woman knew nothing of that. She was asleep in the corner of a world that wanted to forget she was there. She was left alone as the system moved on all around her and the train rolled on, stop by stop, to the end of the line.
The Metrolink system in California is a culture unto itself. It's a world of people in suits and business casual with older women or twenty-somethings dabbing makeup, teens with plugged ears punching music players, men thumbing PDAs or tapping laptops. A few talk loudly on blue-tooth devices making business deals so the world can hear — though they get looks from those around them. Metrolink can be loud, but not that loud. Ages range from about 16 to 70. You don't often see young children or infants, and you rarely see people old enough that they can't easily navigate steps. Strollers are rare. Metrolink is supposed to be disability-accessible, but the practical reality is that it's a fast ride for people who move fast. There are exceptions, and when they're aboard, they're noticed — a kind of spectacle for the group to observe.
Some read the paper (really). Others sleep, but in a kind of dignified way. It's a controlled world. You don't mess with the system — not for long. Kids who climb aboard with no ticket get citations from the conductor or one of the many L.A. County Sheriff's Deputies who patrol the train. Ticket-less kids get found out because, well, they just stick out. You know them. When people in downtown L.A. board Metrolink (thinking it's Amtrak), they're spotted right away, too. It's the big luggage (though a few luggage-toting people do take Metrolink to get home from an Amtrak stop in L.A.) People who don't speak English — regardless the cultural background — become a problem, too on the morning Metrolink routes, unless they're bilingual.
This week, about halfway between the Riverside downtown station and L.A. Union station, a woman boarded in a dark hooded sweatshirt and grayish pants. Her face was wrinkled and dry, her shoulder-length hair matted and stringy. Her feet, in worn-looking sandals, were leathery. She looked tired. And she reeked of dried urine — a stench so strong it had the sting of ammonia in it. She carried a small reddish plastic grocery bag with various items, including a black velvety thing with pinkish tassels. Was she homeless? She fit the stereotype. And train riding is all about sizing people up — fast. It helps you know where to sit, or not sit. Once in a seat, your knees are inches from the person across from you. Depending on the girth of the person next to you, it can get cozy — in a bad way. Respiratory illness spreads fast on Metrolink.
The sweat-shirted woman dropped into the aisle seat across from me and within minutes the woman directly across from me rose and trudged upstairs. The man seated across and to the left of me was reading the paper and, as if waking, asked under his breath, "What's that smell?" He looked over at the woman, who had now moved over to the window and was huddled against it, trying to sleep or already out. She looked now like a rumpled pile of laundry. "What's her problem?" he asked me. I didn't answer. The man looked at a woman seated across from the sweat-shirted woman and, with his eyes and by mouthing the words, offered the seat across from me. She rose and moved over and the two gave each other knowing looks and shook their heads.
If the sweat-shirted woman was homeless, and even if she wasn't, there was something about her that was a confrontation of this commuter cultural system. Just by showing up, she was reminding these routine-minded people that there was a larger, very-hard world outside this narrow metal car rolling down predictable steel tracks. This was a woman who — by choice or by circumstances forced on her — was living proof that the world can be unbearable. She was hard to look at, hard to be near, maybe harder to understand.
I noticed that nobody confronted her — not even the conductor, who walked by and sized her up without pausing in his gait. He could have asked for tickets. I'd seen him do so in other circumstances, carding the whole train car to nab someone he suspected was a freeloader.
But nobody tried to help her, either. That's also a rule of commuter life. Those who don't fit the system get left out.
Metrolink is a place where the lives of desperate people get hidden under a veneer of disciplined control. You punch your ticket, you board the train on time, you get off where you're supposed to. But underneath is often the pain of an abusive spouse, kids in trouble, a court system that tramples, a boss that demeans, an economy that sucks the life out of a woman or man. It can produce a kind of silent scream that can be seen in the eyes, in the tone of voice, in the very gait.
But when these board the train with their stooped weariness, if they are part of the accepted commuter cultures, there is a degree of comfort — laughter and a kind of solace, albeit mixed with pain, in these cloth-covered seats of the Metrolink cars. There are card games, there's nut bread or chocolates handed out at holiday times. It's all a kind of coping.
But this woman knew nothing of that. She was asleep in the corner of a world that wanted to forget she was there. She was left alone as the system moved on all around her and the train rolled on, stop by stop, to the end of the line.
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