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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