Tag: Looking Back

What Should Journalism Be? (Part 2): Where I use an article from Mo at the NYT to expand on my thoughts

I had considered maybe talking a little more about the present-day state of journalism through the lens of my debut book, The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt, after discussing it last weekend.

However, I thought it might be a little too much navel-gazing to do a part two, especially when it could have seemed to have been to be overly self-promotional (which I’m trying to avoid). Thankfully, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote something this weekend which gives me a good entry point into talking about journalism again.

I don’t want this to be one of those pieces that bangs on about how things used to be better, and they’ll never be as good again.
But, when it comes to newsrooms, it happens to be true.

That’s how Maureen starts her column in the 29 April 2023 edition of the New York Times, entitled “Requiem for the Newsroom.” In the column, she looks back at the era of the newspaper newsrooms of the 20th century, with the input of several of her former journalism colleagues, and what current journalism, especially those who work from home, is missing out from this experience. She does make at least a couple of good points. However, I think that she overlooks a few things, one of those being that the lack of newsrooms is nowhere near the biggest problem facing newspapers today.

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While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. I will eventually be opening some special contests, offers, and first looks at original fiction, poems, and other items. Just click the button below.

What Should Journalism Be? A look back at my book The Holy Fool

That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.

Tim O’Brien

Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.

Alan Moore, V For Vendetta

It might seem a bit navel-gazing to undertake any sort of analysis of my own fiction. However, with the upcoming approach of my new book getting published, and with some of the writers I have gotten to know and/or reunite with, especially on Substack, this subject presented itself.

When I finally decided to get off my rear and begin writing my first book, I wasn’t planning on creating something complicated.

I sure wasn’t trying to plan for a massive bestseller by finding the new hot trend in fiction and following it. I certainly wouldn’t have chosen “journalism thriller” as my genre, and I sure as hell wasn’t keeping marketing in mind when I decided to call it The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt.

As with nearly all of the times I ever got the urge to write something, it was something that profoundly moved me. In this case, it was my relationship with journalism that started generating the story idea. Although at the time, the story seemed quite straightforward to me, I was also trying to work out how I felt about the profession in the book as well.

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Read more of this content when you subscribe today.

Subscribe

While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. I will eventually be opening some special contests, offers, and first looks at original fiction, poems, and other items. Just click the button below.