I don’t think I have read a better distillation of a Day In The Life of a reporter online than this from Hussein. The whole section is so good but, god, the dancing around the edges bit is such a clear point on how the rigmarole of the job sometimes stops you from just outright saying what’s happening.
“ So you’re thinking to yourself about this as someone who produces content which is designed to distil what’s happening, while also having the labour pressures of having to produce stuff at breakneck speed and make sure that there are no inaccuracies because your news organisation can’t afford the libel and can’t afford to defend you and pay your legal fees. Suddenly, now, you’re in this position where you not only have to produce at a breakneck speed but you also have to really dance around the edges to make sure that you can still do what you’re doing. And by dancing around the edges you’re not actually describing what’s going on. And it just becomes more and more confusing, and then the digital content that you produce ends up becoming objectified and rarefied, even if it’s not about what you write. It could be about the fact that you write on BuzzFeed, or the fact that you have a blue checkmark on Twitter, or all of these aesthetics that represent you in a very abstract, social media hierarchy that doesn’t really exist.”
I don’t think I have read a better distillation of a Day In The Life of a reporter online than this from Hussein. The whole section is so good but, god, the dancing around the edges bit is such a clear point on how the rigmarole of the job sometimes stops you from just outright saying what’s happening.
“ So you’re thinking to yourself about this as someone who produces content which is designed to distil what’s happening, while also having the labour pressures of having to produce stuff at breakneck speed and make sure that there are no inaccuracies because your news organisation can’t afford the libel and can’t afford to defend you and pay your legal fees. Suddenly, now, you’re in this position where you not only have to produce at a breakneck speed but you also have to really dance around the edges to make sure that you can still do what you’re doing. And by dancing around the edges you’re not actually describing what’s going on. And it just becomes more and more confusing, and then the digital content that you produce ends up becoming objectified and rarefied, even if it’s not about what you write. It could be about the fact that you write on BuzzFeed, or the fact that you have a blue checkmark on Twitter, or all of these aesthetics that represent you in a very abstract, social media hierarchy that doesn’t really exist.”