A little tidbit in Choire Sicha’s post about the NYT’s recent efforts to rein in the use of Twitter by their staffers: An extremely successful reporter, when I worked [at the Times], once asked me if she was in the “rubber room,” referring to the detention places New York City
"But I also want to nominate this dynamic, of never knowing if you’re in trouble but sensing that you are and facing career consequences because of it, as a ubiquitous feature of professional life in media."
This is how I felt in academia. Its how I now feel in government.
I think it's a quality in any field where social status and striving are more important than outputs. They want you to feel shame about what you don't know. But, they can't tell you what you did wrong, because you aren't judged by a set a rules, instead the ever changing opinion of the mob.
I don't have any experience in media, but the constant sense of paranoia you write about sounds familiar to me from hearing interviews with contestants on shows I enjoy like Survivor and Big Brother, where the goal all the same dynamics of popularity and false friendships play out as people are forced to make alliances and then turn and vote each other out. Of course, these shows are for 39 days or a summer or something, and contestants talk about how difficult it is psychologically both being it and coming out of it. I can't imagine living in that for decades.
I can remember when social media was exciting, now it just feels like a liability. When the eye in the sky is watching 24/7 and anything you say can and will be used against you the whole of social media just feels like a giant honeypot. The older I get the more I want to keep the low profile.
Academic journals are peer reviewed usually blind reviewed. Measurement of writing and influence for university faculty is meticulous with all kinds of metrics and citation analysis. These are used for annual evaluations and promotion. It makes a difference where you publish, how often you are cited, where you are cited. It's a huge enterprise.
It isn't totally impartial but tries to be.
I can't imagine the pressure of everything in the non-academic media being so dependent on the opinion or attitude of someone you know.
This is cultthink chugging along at full steam, plowing through our civilization and destroying everything in its path. The meta-parasites that live in the social cloud and co-opt the brains of anyone they can to run their code is the great plague of our day. This dynamic is obvious when you learn to see it, and its why I gave up keeping up with the "news," since most of it isn't informative, it's a lure baited with information but designed to crack our defenses and inject malicious code into our brains so that we, too, will become another node in the corrupted network.
It is interesting that a lot or the traditional" mental illnesses" have the side effect of protecting people from neurotypical social hivemind cultthink. Sadly, the hiveminds can sense this and their response is to kill or sterilize us whenever possible.
I went to college for journalism, but I never made it into the industry. Honestly, my skin just isn't thick enough to deal with that kind of drama-filled work environment. I'm in finance now writing correspondence letters to clients, and I'm generally happy with where I'm at.
If I could do it all over again, I'd avoid journalism and writing like the plague. It definitely would've made my 20s more enjoyable. But you live and you learn.
Do you (or anyone else in the know) think this dynamic is also true of smaller, lower-profile publishing outlets? I have no aspirations to be a full-time professional writer, but have always dabbled in writing and am developing a few book proposals for regional publishing houses and University presses. I realize that even this type of publishing outlet may require some degree of self-promotion, and can work with that, but I would be less likely to move forward if I knew that I was looking at lots of social-media curation and currying of favor. I could manage a few local readings and things like that, but have neither the ability nor the interest to put a lot of work into managing a social media presence.
And yes, as others have said, I have felt an element of this in academia as well, though not to the degree you've described here.
Excellent writers are always in demand. The talent to express ideas in both fiction and non-fiction forms at such a high quality virtually guarantees a market and with that a degree of ongoing success.
Having said that, if you do end up in a salt mine, please write an essay about your experiences.
Is it possible that part of it is that the media is currently composed of people who are very, very similar in terms of both socioeconomic class and culture and this happens to be a particularly neurotic group that might find normal communication difficult? Replying to people is something I often find difficult, I have probably lost a few friendships because of it, but luckily I'm not in a bubble of other anxious people and so all our various idiosyncracies even out to functional social relations. But I can't imagine how it is an industry where everyone seems to share such similar personality traits...
I’m annoyed that the NYT may be ghosting you. This will be my new justification for paying a ‘student’ rate nine years out of grad school. If they ever get me on the phone (good luck) I’ll tell them I can’t pay full price for a paper that doesn’t publish deBoer.
Fortunately, you’re in a much better place than the vast majority of people working in journalism / short nonfiction. Most people with staff writing jobs couldn’t get 4,000 paying subscribers if their lives depended on it—they’re completely dependent on the good graces of the cool kids. I’d take your situation over theirs any day.
I have been in some form of journalism for some 40 years now, and I've had this "rubber room, maybe, I dunno, I think probably yes" experience many times. I think I may be having it again as I type this.
That said, there is a force that pushes against the effects of reputational blobs: Sheer accident. A piece falls through, there is going to be a hole in the next issue, and suddenly *your* piece -- which has been moldering, held for a year -- looks lovely. The editor who always returns your emails goes on maternity leave, and no one else is that anxious about you one way or the other, so there goes that institutional connection. An editor who found you exasperating 5 years ago really wants an article on X, which you can deliver. So, um, that was then, this is now, whatever. IOW even as reputational anxiety dogs us, it's also true that institutional memories at most publications are short, and random events can rejigger our standing.
Medieval Europeans may have been onto something with their image of the Wheel of Fortune. You are bound to it. It takes you up. It takes you down. You glory in your abilities and worry about your standing. But the wheel turns as Fortune pleases.
How can working in such an atmosphere not make you a literal paranoid? Not the best mindset to have as a reporter, it seems to me.
"But I also want to nominate this dynamic, of never knowing if you’re in trouble but sensing that you are and facing career consequences because of it, as a ubiquitous feature of professional life in media."
This is how I felt in academia. Its how I now feel in government.
I think it's a quality in any field where social status and striving are more important than outputs. They want you to feel shame about what you don't know. But, they can't tell you what you did wrong, because you aren't judged by a set a rules, instead the ever changing opinion of the mob.
In my mind you’re a public intellectual far more than you’re a writer. Maybe that’s part of the issue?
I don't have any experience in media, but the constant sense of paranoia you write about sounds familiar to me from hearing interviews with contestants on shows I enjoy like Survivor and Big Brother, where the goal all the same dynamics of popularity and false friendships play out as people are forced to make alliances and then turn and vote each other out. Of course, these shows are for 39 days or a summer or something, and contestants talk about how difficult it is psychologically both being it and coming out of it. I can't imagine living in that for decades.
I can remember when social media was exciting, now it just feels like a liability. When the eye in the sky is watching 24/7 and anything you say can and will be used against you the whole of social media just feels like a giant honeypot. The older I get the more I want to keep the low profile.
Academic journals are peer reviewed usually blind reviewed. Measurement of writing and influence for university faculty is meticulous with all kinds of metrics and citation analysis. These are used for annual evaluations and promotion. It makes a difference where you publish, how often you are cited, where you are cited. It's a huge enterprise.
It isn't totally impartial but tries to be.
I can't imagine the pressure of everything in the non-academic media being so dependent on the opinion or attitude of someone you know.
But it's still writing.
This is cultthink chugging along at full steam, plowing through our civilization and destroying everything in its path. The meta-parasites that live in the social cloud and co-opt the brains of anyone they can to run their code is the great plague of our day. This dynamic is obvious when you learn to see it, and its why I gave up keeping up with the "news," since most of it isn't informative, it's a lure baited with information but designed to crack our defenses and inject malicious code into our brains so that we, too, will become another node in the corrupted network.
It is interesting that a lot or the traditional" mental illnesses" have the side effect of protecting people from neurotypical social hivemind cultthink. Sadly, the hiveminds can sense this and their response is to kill or sterilize us whenever possible.
Fascinating, it does sound like high school but with an intense overlay of self promotion and preening. Journalists are douche bags.
I went to college for journalism, but I never made it into the industry. Honestly, my skin just isn't thick enough to deal with that kind of drama-filled work environment. I'm in finance now writing correspondence letters to clients, and I'm generally happy with where I'm at.
If I could do it all over again, I'd avoid journalism and writing like the plague. It definitely would've made my 20s more enjoyable. But you live and you learn.
Saved for my quotes collection under "superb aphorisms": 'It’s easy to not do things, but nothing is easier to not do than to not send an email.'
Do you (or anyone else in the know) think this dynamic is also true of smaller, lower-profile publishing outlets? I have no aspirations to be a full-time professional writer, but have always dabbled in writing and am developing a few book proposals for regional publishing houses and University presses. I realize that even this type of publishing outlet may require some degree of self-promotion, and can work with that, but I would be less likely to move forward if I knew that I was looking at lots of social-media curation and currying of favor. I could manage a few local readings and things like that, but have neither the ability nor the interest to put a lot of work into managing a social media presence.
And yes, as others have said, I have felt an element of this in academia as well, though not to the degree you've described here.
Excellent writers are always in demand. The talent to express ideas in both fiction and non-fiction forms at such a high quality virtually guarantees a market and with that a degree of ongoing success.
Having said that, if you do end up in a salt mine, please write an essay about your experiences.
Is it possible that part of it is that the media is currently composed of people who are very, very similar in terms of both socioeconomic class and culture and this happens to be a particularly neurotic group that might find normal communication difficult? Replying to people is something I often find difficult, I have probably lost a few friendships because of it, but luckily I'm not in a bubble of other anxious people and so all our various idiosyncracies even out to functional social relations. But I can't imagine how it is an industry where everyone seems to share such similar personality traits...
I’m annoyed that the NYT may be ghosting you. This will be my new justification for paying a ‘student’ rate nine years out of grad school. If they ever get me on the phone (good luck) I’ll tell them I can’t pay full price for a paper that doesn’t publish deBoer.
Fortunately, you’re in a much better place than the vast majority of people working in journalism / short nonfiction. Most people with staff writing jobs couldn’t get 4,000 paying subscribers if their lives depended on it—they’re completely dependent on the good graces of the cool kids. I’d take your situation over theirs any day.
Well said, Freddie. All of it.
I have been in some form of journalism for some 40 years now, and I've had this "rubber room, maybe, I dunno, I think probably yes" experience many times. I think I may be having it again as I type this.
That said, there is a force that pushes against the effects of reputational blobs: Sheer accident. A piece falls through, there is going to be a hole in the next issue, and suddenly *your* piece -- which has been moldering, held for a year -- looks lovely. The editor who always returns your emails goes on maternity leave, and no one else is that anxious about you one way or the other, so there goes that institutional connection. An editor who found you exasperating 5 years ago really wants an article on X, which you can deliver. So, um, that was then, this is now, whatever. IOW even as reputational anxiety dogs us, it's also true that institutional memories at most publications are short, and random events can rejigger our standing.
Medieval Europeans may have been onto something with their image of the Wheel of Fortune. You are bound to it. It takes you up. It takes you down. You glory in your abilities and worry about your standing. But the wheel turns as Fortune pleases.